Chapter IV: Lost Free Choice After the Fall.
CHAPTER IV: ON LOST FREE CHOICE AFTER THE FALL
The corruption of the mind after the fall.
§ 34. In regard to the mind of man not yet reborn, Scripture bears witness that darkness took the place of the concreated light which gleamed in the mind of the first man. Eph. 5:8: “At one time you were darkness.” John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness,” “that people might be turned from darkness to light” (Acts 26:18). Accordingly, it ought not be thought that the intellect merely sees badly in the true and salutary knowledge of God, but rather is completely darkened. But this darkness is such that the shadow of death is united with it (Isa. 9:1). Luke 1:79: “Men who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Thus they are in the darkness of death; that is, those who remain in that darkness are drawn to eternal death. Paul expresses it this way, Eph. 4:18: “They have an intellect obscured by darkness” (ἐσκoτισμένoι τῇ διανoίᾳ), “alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance which is in them” (that is, which adheres in their nature) “due to the blindness” (πώρωσιν, “calloused hardness”). Eph. 4:17: “They walk in the futility of their minds.” That is, as it is explained in Rom. 1:21: “They became futile in their thinking, and their foolish heart was darkened.” 1 Tim. 6:5: “They are depraved in mind.” Acts 17:30: “They live in times of ignorance.”
Therefore, even though the mind of man shapes thoughts which, in its opinion, are excellent enough, nevertheless they are vain in the judgment of God. Gen. [6:5]: “Every imagination of the heart” (even those thoughts which are formed with very great care and the loftiest wisdom) “is only evil every day.” Consequently, Matt. 16:17: “Flesh and blood has not revealed to us the saving knowledge of God”; that is, as man is born into the world from the flesh and blood of corrupt parents, he cannot aspire to this knowledge with his innate abilities because, 1 Cor. 2:14: “The soulish man1 does not perceive those things which are of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he cannot understand them.” Here the “soulish man” is the same as the “flesh and blood” in Christ’s statement, that is, from the sort of man who, without the recalling [force] of the Spirit, has been endowed solely with the powers and faculties of [human] nature. Paul removes both the knowledge and the understanding of those things which are of the Spirit, so that [the soulish man] is able neither to understand them nor to embrace them with a strong or weak assent. In fact, not only the “knowledge” but even the “power of knowledge,” that active “receiving” power, is taken away from him, and therefore also the “mind of the flesh” is removed, not only the inclination but also the wisdom of the flesh (as the Vulgate version has it).
The most excellent thoughts and efforts of the mind in the carnal man (or the not yet regenerate person who is still under the old flesh) “are enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7). Here, in the substantive [verb],2 there is a great emphasis, because not only is our mind unfriendly toward God, but it also is actually enmity against God, so that “every thought must be made captive under obedience to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). Therefore we conclude with the words of the apostle, 2 Cor. 3:5: “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think that anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.” Here the prepositions ἀπό [“from”] and ἐξ [“from”] must be observed, by which it is indicated that within our powers there exists no capability of thinking anything good; but now, thinking is much less than assenting, considering, firmly proposing for oneself, etc.
The assertion of statements of Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2[:14]: “The soulish man does not perceive those things which are of the Spirit,” etc.
§ 35. These oracles of Scripture, written like rays of the sun, bear quite clear witness about the extreme corruption of the intellect and its inability to perceive spiritual good; yet they do not remain free from corruptions. The statement of the apostle “The natural man does not perceive the things which are of the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:14) was once so corrupted by Emser that he commanded us to take “ψυχικὸς man” to mean his sensitive appetite which he has in common with beasts. But the apostle is not speaking about a part of man but about the whole of man not yet reborn, who is not controlled by the Spirit of God, for it is obvious that he is called “soulish” [animalis] from “soul” [anima], just as the carnal wisdom of people not yet reborn is called “soulish wisdom” (James 3:15). Therefore what is meant by the term “soulish man” is one who acts as he has been endowed with the powers and faculties only of nature, without the renewal of the Holy Spirit. Him the apostle calls “soulish” because he does not intend to mean Epicureans who are “irrational animals” (according to 2 Pet. 2:12), but those who cultivate the most powerful part of themselves, namely, the soul. He says that such people neither know nor receive the things which are of the Spirit of God. Augustine (on John, tract. 98): “The soulish man, that is, he who thinks according to man, is called ‘soulish’ [animalis] from ‘soul’ [anima], and ‘carnal’ [carnalis] from ‘flesh’ [caro], because the whole man consists of soul and flesh and does not perceive the things which are of the Spirit of God, that is, what grace the cross of Christ gives to those who believe.” The text of the apostle shows this very thing clearly, for the apostle is setting the soulish man in opposition to him who has the Spirit of God ([1 Cor. 2:]12), who is illumined by the Spirit of God and is directed by Him to good.
2 Corinthians 3[:5]: “We are not sufficient to think anything.”
§ 36. That second passage is no less clear. 2 Cor. 3:5: “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.” Bellarmine (De grat. et lib. arb., bk. 6, ch. 13) says that this favors his opinion very much, since the apostle is not denying that we are sufficient and, in fact, immediately adds that our sufficiency is from God. Bellarmine says: “Therefore we are sufficient to think something—indeed, even to will and to do something—but only after we have received our powers from God. For unless we were free in choice, we would not rightly be said to be sufficient of ourselves, just as one would not rightly say that a horse or a stone is not sufficient of itself to think anything about God.”
We respond from Augustine (De grat. et lib. arb., ch. 16): “It is certain that it is we who will when we will, but that it is He who causes us to will, of whom it is said, ‘It is God who works in us to will’ [Phil. 2:13]. It is certain that it is we who act when we act, but it is He who causes us to act by providing our will with the most effectual of powers, about whom it is said, ‘I shall cause you to act’ [cf. Ezek. 36:27].”
Whether the apostolic statement favors the opinion of Bellarmine will become apparent below [§§ 81–83], after we have heard him first discuss the powers of free choice. We readily concede that a passive or receptive captivity of spiritual impulses survives in the intellect of man which does not exist in a tree or stone, but we deny that some active power or activity survives. If, then, we are only sufficient to think, will, and do something good after we have received our powers from God (through regeneration and renewal), it follows that before God gave us those powers there was no sufficiency in us. But Bellarmine is playing games with the word “sufficiency” [sufficientia] in saying that we indeed are capable [idonei] of ourselves to think something good and to have some powers, but not sufficient [sufficientes], in order that by this reasoning there may be a coming together of grace and free choice in conversion, as if free choice would begin a good thing and God would grant the power to complete it. But in Greek it is oὔκ ἐσμεν ἱκανoὶ—“we are not capable [idonei], not able [δυνατoί], and not equipped with necessary powers.” Xenophon uses the expression ἱκανὸς εἰμὶ ἐπιτυχεῖν, “I am able to pursue something.”
In regard to the reborn it is rightly said that they have been equipped with some powers for good, though not with sufficient powers, because without the aid of divine grace they are unable to accomplish a good thing. But to those not yet reborn the apostle attributes neither perfect powers nor some powers for good, but an extreme inability, as a comparison of this passage with the prior one shows, 1 Cor. 2:14: “The soulish man does not perceive those things which are of the Spirit of God”—in fact, he is not even able.
Ambrose (De fuga seculi, ch. 1) and Augustine (De bono persev., bk. 2, ch. 8): “From that which the apostle says—that ‘we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything good as coming from us’—they conclude that our hearts and thoughts are not within our own power, and that pious thoughts are given to the human heart by God.” De bono persev. (ch. 13): “We believe as we think, we speak as we think, we do whatever we do as we think. But as far as attaining piety and the true worship of God are concerned, ‘we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves as coming from us.’” Contra duas epist. Pelag. ad Bonifac. (bk. 2, ch. 8):
These men
(the Pelagians)
want the desire for good in man to begin from man himself, so that the merit of this beginning is also followed by the grace for completing it, etc. But the Lord, that He might respond to them, does not say, “Without Me you can finish nothing,” but “Without Me you can do nothing” [John 15:5]. For had He said “finish,” then they could say that the help of God is necessary not for beginning a good which is of ourselves but for finishing it, etc. Let them see how they shall respond to the apostle when he says, “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as coming from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God” [2 Cor. 3:5]. “To think,” he says, “anything good”—but to think is less than to desire. Indeed, we think everything that we desire, yet we do not desire everything that we think, because sometimes we think things we do not desire. Therefore since it is less to think than to desire—for a person can think a good thing which he does not yet wish, and, by completing it, he can later desire what beforehand he thought without desiring it—how is it that we are “not sufficient of ourselves” for what is less, that is, “to think something good, but our sufficiency is of God,” but we are sufficient for something greater, that is, to desire something good without divine aid, being sufficient from our free choice?
According to the explanation of Ambrose and Augustine, you see that in the statement of the apostle not only the sufficient powers but also all powers for good are removed from the natural powers of free choice.
Earlier, in the treatise On Original Sin [Commonplace XII, § 52], we vindicated the statement of Gen. 8[:21] from the corruptions of our adversaries.
The corruption of the will after the fall.
§ 37. Scripture speaks about the corruption of the will in words no less tragic. For it calls people “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1) and “dead in sins” (John 15:5; Col. 2:13). But as a man who is dead in regard to nature and to men can perform none of the things which are of nature and men, so also he who is dead in sins in regard to God cannot truly understand or do the things which are of God and of true devotion, but he is compelled only to rot in his sins and to decompose in the sepulcher of sins. Scripture calls those who deliver themselves up to obedience to the wretched slavery of sin “free in regard to righteousness” (Rom. 6:20) and “slaves of sin” (John 8:34). But now, in Rom. 6:16: “He who yields himself to someone as an obedient slave, he is his slave.” In Ezek. 36:26 man’s heart is said to be “of stone.” Therefore as a stone cannot prepare itself to become suitable for constructing a building, so God wants to build people as living stones “upon Christ, who is the cornerstone, that they may become His spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5). But people cannot prepare themselves because their hearts are of stone. God can do it. In fact, “He is able to raise up children of Abraham from stones” (Luke 3:8). In Rom. 5:10, man is said to be hostile to God before conversion. Therefore as the will of a man fights against his enemy, so also man flees from God before his conversion. Therefore those who carry out the will of their flesh and of their thoughts are “by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3); that is, they are subject to the wrath and judgment of God. The man who is not reborn is said to be “an evil tree which cannot produce good fruits” (Matt. 7:18). He is compared to thorns and thistles from which you cannot gather grapes (v. 16). The Creator says about them, Jer. 13:23: “If the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots, then you will be able to do good, though you are evil.”
The assertion of the statements of Scripture. John 8[:34]: “He who sins is a slave of sin.”
§ 38. Bellarmine (De grat. et lib. arb., bk. 5, ch. 29) responds in this way to the statements in which people who are not yet reborn are said to be slaves of sin:
As they are generally understood, slavery and freedom are opposed, but not every slavery is opposed to every freedom. Accordingly, in these statements the slavery of sin is opposed to freedom from sin but not to the freedom of the nature which, properly speaking, is free choice. He who is the slave of sin cannot by his own powers cast off the yoke of sin and advance to the freedom of righteousness. Yet through free choice and with the help of God he can be freed from sin and, if he wishes, can remain in the slavery of sin. So also, on the contrary, with the slavery of nature: that is, the natural determination toward one action, such as exists in herd animals, is opposed to the freedom of nature, that is, to the free choice of the will, but not yet [is it opposed] to the freedom from sin; indeed, they lack the freedom of nature, and, by the very fact that they lack it, they can by no means be slaves of sin.
We respond. He is confusing freedom from compulsion with the freedom of uprightness. If by freedom of nature Bellarmine means the very essence of the will or freedom from compulsion, then we say that man did not lose it through the fall, for man still does evil freely. But if by the freedom of nature he means the freedom of uprightness by which the will of man is in a neutral position for selecting good or evil (in which direction it seems to point, because he defines the slavery of nature by the determination toward one thing), then we say that it surely was lost through sin. But Bellarmine errs in contrasting free choice to the determination toward one thing, insinuating that a determination toward just one thing does not comport with man’s free choice. To this we respond with the words of Bernard (De grat. et lib. arb.) which were cited earlier [§ 27]: “No one should think that it is called ‘free choice’ because it deals with an equal power or capability between good and evil. Otherwise neither God nor the angels, whether good or evil ones, would be said to have free choice. But on this basis choice is said to be free: because it does its free will equally whether in good or in evil.” Thus the slavery of sin to which people not yet reborn are subject does not remove the freedom of nature, if by that term the inclination prone to evil is understood. But it does take away the freedom of nature, if by that term is understood the concreated freedom of uprightness originally inherent in the human nature by which the will acted with an equal capability between good and evil.
Therefore he speaks deceitfully in saying that a person not yet reborn can be free from sin through free choice with the help of God. For if it is understood in this way, that the help of God awakens the sleeping powers of free choice so that the grace of God and the will of man are allied causes of conversion, it is false. But he speaks correctly if this is explained in such a way that man differs from a brute animal in the respect that after the fall he still has been endowed with a will to which the grace of conversion can belong as to a subject,3 which cannot belong to herd animals in this way.
Ezekiel 36[:26]: “I shall take away the heart of stone.”
§ 39. The prophetic statement in which man’s heart is said to be of stone (Ezek. 36:26) clearly shows that no powers remained after the fall in the will of man, powers by which it could work together with divine grace to do good.
Bellarmine (De lib. arbit., bk. 6, ch. 13) counters: “Free choice is not a heart of stone, nor of flesh, but rather is a middle and natural force which can receive the form of stone (that is, the hardness of sin) and the form of flesh (that is, the softness of grace).”
We respond. This “force” means either the inner and essential freedom of the will by which the will acts freely in whatever it does, or the exterior freedom with regard to its object, by which the will can be borne either to good or to evil. If it is the first, we concede that it still survives in man. If it is the latter, we expressly deny it. There is also an ambiguity in the term “receive,” for if that is understood as a sort of active capacity, aptitude, and active force, we deny that such a sufficiency survives in man, by which the softness of grace can be received. But if it is understood as a passive capacity by which the will of man is established as a subject receptive of divine grace, we concede that such a receptivity still survives.
Accordingly, from the prophetic saying we conclude that man, considered in himself and in his own natural powers after the fall, has only a heart of stone; therefore of himself he cannot soften it and receive the softness of grace. Rather, it is required that divine grace take away the innate hardness and grant new powers to embrace the good, so that in this way a new heart and spirit would be created (Ezek. 11:19).
Bellarmine himself seems to acknowledge this, and thus he adds: “When this middle and natural force” (of free choice) “is of such a character through sin that it is called a heart of stone, it does not have of itself the power to turn to God and to become a heart of flesh, but rather takes on that power by the prevenient grace of God. For when free choice has been excited and prepared through prevenient grace, it does have the power to cooperate for its own conversion through the powers which it has received from God.”
This is said most rightly, except that a trap hides in the word “excited,” a trap which we shall uncover later. There, with the same effort, we shall deal with Bellarmine’s claim that Chemnitz has perceived and recited the opinion of the Papists not quite rightly and faithfully, as though their opinion is that free choice, excited by grace, exercises powers which it has even before it is excited, and that through its own powers it consents to the divine call in such a way that prevenient grace does not give powers to free choice but, as it were, arouses sleeping powers. Bellarmine denies that this is the opinion of the Papists, though they indeed acknowledge that man has free choice; yet he claims that they do not say or think that free choice of itself has any power even close to acts of piety, but rather receives that power from God through prevenient grace. This entire matter will be discussed below [§ 81].
Ephesians 2[:1]: “We were dead in sins.”
§ 40. Thus Bellarmine beclouds the clear words of the Holy Spirit with which He asserts that people who are not yet reborn are dead in trespasses and sins [Eph. 2:1]: “Those who are dead in sins because they live the life of nature, though they do not live the life of grace, will be able not as dead but as men living in one kind of life to cooperate toward their own vivification according to a second kind of life, if they have received from God the power to cooperate.”
We respond. Of course, natural life remains after the fall, but man cannot cooperate with God through this natural life for his own internal conversion. By the gift of natural life he can indeed hear, read, and meditate on the Word, which is the medium of conversion, but he can bring nothing from the shrine and sanctuary of his own natural powers to the actual act of conversion, which Bellarmine himself appears to acknowledge when he adds: “The power to cooperate comes from God.”
Therefore just as a dead person can provide no help for his physical resuscitation, so a person spiritually dead in sins can provide no help for his spiritual resuscitation, that is, for his conversion, illumination, regeneration, and renewal. The Holy Spirit does not excite the vital force which a person uses profitably for his conversion as if that force were already lying hidden in the person, but [He] confers it completely anew. The life of nature has nothing of importance for this subject, because natural life itself is death before God. In fact, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7). The spiritual life is of a far superior and higher level than the natural life; how, then, could the natural provide anything to begin the impulse of the spiritual life, since a cause is never inferior to its effect? Scripture proceeds in this way: “Without Christ man can do nothing” (John 15:5) because “he is dead in his sins” (Eph. 2:1). Bellarmine proceeds in the contrary fashion: a person excited by grace and helped by God can accomplish something and can cooperate because he is still living the natural life.
Conversion is the work of God.
§ 41. The work of conversion is solely attributed to God. He “shines in our hearts” (2 Cor. 4:6), gives us “understanding to learn His testimonies” (Ps. 119:34), makes the “eyes of our mind illumined” (Eph. 1:18), and not only this, but He also “opens our eyes that they may turn from darkness to light” (Acts 26:18). For this reason Augustine writes (De pecc. merit. et remis., bk. 2, ch. 5): “The grace of illumination is no less necessary to minds than light is to the eyes. In fact,” he says, “we ourselves open our eyes to see the light, but the eyes of the mind remain closed unless God opens them.” If God did not give eyes to see and a heart to understand, we would hear His Word and see His miracles in vain. According to Deut. 20:[3–]4, it is God who “softens the heart”; Ezek. 36:26, He “gives a heart of flesh” (since otherwise it is of stone); Acts 16:14, He “opens the heart” (since otherwise it remains closed); Deut. 30:6, He “circumcises the heart” (otherwise man is of an uncircumcised heart, Acts 7:51); Ezek. 6:9 [Vg], He has “broken the heart” (since otherwise the heart of man is hard, Rom. 2:5, and like a road hardened by traffic, Jer. 17:9); Ezek. 11:19, He “gives a new heart”; Col. 3:5, the members of the old Adam must be mortified; 2 Cor. 4:16, the outer man must be wasted away; John 6:44, it is God “who draws”; Phil. 2:13, it is God “who gives that we will” (since otherwise we do not will); Isa. 57:15, it is God who “gives life” (since otherwise people are dead in trespasses, Col. 2:13); Acts 15:9, He “purifies hearts” (since otherwise corrupt thoughts, etc., proceed from the heart, Matt. 15:19); in fact, Ps. 51:[10], He “creates a clean heart” (so that our conversion is a reshaping and rebuilding, and just as much power is required for a person’s conversion as for his creation; in fact, if we believe Augustine and Bernard, it is a greater work of God to make a wicked person devout than to create heaven and earth).
Therefore observe that God opens, converts, and softens hearts, yet because they are very hard, He also breaks and circumcises them. When this still accomplishes nothing, He removes the heart of stone and gives—or, rather, creates—a new one. Our Physician (Exod. 15:26) bandages and applies remedies to our weak nature, but this is insufficient because of its extreme corruption. It must be renewed, resuscitated from death, and regenerated. There is clearly a need not merely for healing but rather for a new birth.
The counterarguments of Bellarmine.
§ 42. Bellarmine (De grat. et lib. arb., bk. 5, ch. 29; bk. 6, ch. 13) objects: (I) “God does not incline our hearts by forcing them nor by bringing in a necessity, but by persuading and inviting with internal inspiration. Through the help of His grace, God indeed acts so that we assent to Him as He calls, but He does this by aiding our weakness, and not by taking away our freedom.”
We respond. The human will is not only weak but rather is completely dead to good; hence it needs not only help for its weakness but also the gift of new powers. God inclines and invites the will not only by rousing and persuading it but also by working within it effectually. Yet the freedom to reject grace is not removed, for, alas, too often the work of God in conversion is turned away by men; and God grants and confers the power to receive grace upon the will.
(II) [Bellarmine again:] “Creating a new heart is nothing other than cleansing the heart, and thus it is not absurd that the very substance of the spiritual heart, this seed being received, cooperates with divine grace for germinating the fruit of its own conversion and works of piety.”
We respond. Of course, after a person has been reborn through the Holy Spirit, when he acts, he cooperates for good with those new powers granted by God. But in the first act of conversion, he by no means cooperates by his own natural powers. Therefore [Bellarmine] is always confusing different questions.
(III) [Bellarmine again:] “Just as, regarding the terminus of justification, God creates us, and not we ourselves, since He infuses the habit4 of love, so also, regarding the disposition unto justification, we ourselves do it with the help of God, which Ezek. 18[:27] expressed when he says, ‘He shall make his own soul alive.’”
We respond. Our justification does not consist of the infusion of a habit but of the free forgiveness of sins and of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, about which there will be more in its own place [On Justification through Faith (Commonplace XIX), §§ 195–248]. The idea that unregenerate people make themselves [regenerate]—that is, somehow regenerating themselves or at least preparing themselves for regeneration—is far more absurd than if someone said that an infant in the womb is shaping himself for this life. Augustine (Sermon 10 de verb. apost.):
Let us weep before the Lord, who created us both as human beings and as saved people. For if He made us human beings, but we made ourselves saved, then we did something better than He did. For a saved man is better than any other man. Therefore if God made you a man and you made yourself a good man, what you have done is better. Do not elevate yourself above God. Confess to Him who made you that no one recreates except the one who creates; no one remakes except the one who makes. “He made us, and not we ourselves” [Ps. 100:3], etc. So that you may call upon the Physician, He has roused your heart. God has given you the power to call upon Him. For “it is He who works in us both to will and to do according to His good will” [Phil. 2:13], because in order for you to possess a good will, His call preceded.
The following Sermon 11:
The Holy Spirit saw some people saying or about to say that God made them men but that they made themselves righteous. He foresaw them, admonished them, and called them back from this self-elevation, saying, “He made us, and not we ourselves” [Ps. 100:3]. Why did He add “and not we ourselves” when it would be enough to say, “He made us,” except that He wanted to point out this creation when they say, “We ourselves have made ourselves; that is, that we are righteous, we made ourselves righteous by our free will”? “When we were created,” [they say,] “we received free choice; therefore in order that we might be righteous, we do it by free choice.”
Those are the words of Augustine.
The prophetic statement [Ezek. 18:27] does nothing less than attribute to man the power of vivifying himself or cooperating in vivification. When the wicked person turns away from his wickedness and does righteousness, he makes his soul alive; that is, he will not die, he will not perish, but he will be saved in and for life, as the contrast shows, for among the Hebrews active verbs are often used instead of negating a contrary. Thus he is said to do injury who does not help; he is said to hate who does not love; he is said to harden himself who does not soften himself. The term “make alive”5 is used elsewhere in the Scriptures in the same way. In Exod. 1:17 the Egyptian midwives “gave life to Israelite male infants,” that is, they preserved their lives. Luke 17:33: “Whoever loses his life will make it alive.” Acts 7:19: “Lest the infants be made alive.”
(IV) [Bellarmine again:] “God works in us to will by helping and exciting [us] so that we in truth do the willing. Yet this does not occur without us, otherwise the apostle would not say, ‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2[:12]).”
We respond. The apostle is speaking about the reborn who can cooperate after their regeneration through the new powers given by God. But the question here involves the act of conversion itself, that is, what can the human will accomplish in that act of itself and of its own natural powers? This certainly does not yet amount to someone cooperating, but only passivity [παθητική].
Augustine (De grat. et lib. arbit., ch. 16): “It is certain that it is we who will when we will, but it is He who causes us to will of whom it is said, ‘It is God who works in us to will’ [Phil 2:13].” De grat. Christi contra Pelagium et C[o]elestium (bk. 1, ch. 25):
The grace of God toward us must be preached not [only] on account of the possibility of a good will and work, but even on account of the good will and work [themselves]. The help of divine grace is commended not only because it aids a natural possibility. Let Pelagius cease saying that we can do, say, and think every good thing, that it is His to give us this power but that it is ours to do or speak or think in a good or evil way. Let him, I say, cease to say these things, for not only has God given us our ability and helps it, but He even works in us to will and to do, not because we are not willing or because we are not acting, but because without His help we neither will nor do anything good.
De grat. et lib. arbitr. (ch. 17): “Without us He works in us that we will, but when we will, and will in such a way that we act, He cooperates with us, yet we accomplish nothing for good works of piety without someone working in us to will or cooperating when we will.”
The rebellion of the flesh suppresses free choice.
§ 43. A fourth class of argument must be added to these three classes, one that contains the statements of Scripture which describe the wrestling of flesh and Spirit in the reborn. For if “the flesh is at war with the Spirit” (Gal. 5:17) in the reborn themselves and wrestles with Him in hostility; if “the law of the members is at war with the law of the mind” (Rom. 7:23); if the old flesh retards and impedes the newness of the Spirit in good works—then this happens in conversion itself all the more. Thus the person who is not yet reborn cannot anticipate grace nor take it when it is offered with his own powers of free choice.
Luther (Assert., art. 36, vol. 2 of the Latin, f. 312) writes:
Even the righteous struggle against their flesh in a great contest, that they may do good. And they are resisted by their free choice as well as by the wisdom of the flesh desiring with all its powers against the Spirit, hating the things which are of the Spirit and of the Law of God. How, then, is it possible that it can of its own nature desire in favor of the Spirit and prepare itself for the Spirit by doing what in it lies [faciendo quod in se est] without the Spirit? While it exists in grace, its nature is of such a kind that it fights untamed against grace. Outside of grace can its nature be of such a kind that it helps the Spirit? What greater insanity can be imagined? For this new monster would be similar to this: if someone could not domesticate an untamed animal held in chains, and yet would boast insanely that before there were chains and without the chains it was so tame and gentle that it voluntarily domesticated itself or worked that it might be domesticated. If free choice sins in grace and rages against grace, as we are all forced to feel and as the apostle and all the saints complain of, then surely it is contrary to every sense to say that it is upright outside of grace and prepares itself for an absent grace which, when present, it hates and persecutes.6
Those are the words of Dr. Luther. The Papists counter that “the wrestling of flesh and Spirit is between the sensitive appetite and the superior part of the soul which has remained free of the corruption of sin.” But we have shown the contrary earlier in our commonplace On Original Sin [Commonplace XII, §§ 96–97].
The testimonies of antiquity.
§ 44. The statements of the ancients can be placed into distinct classes, the first of which contains those testimonies in which they attribute everything to divine grace and nothing to the powers of man.
Cyprian (Ad Quirin., bk. 3): “We must glory in nothing because nothing is our doing.” Augustine repeats this in many places.
Basil (Conc. de humil.): “Nothing has been left to you for your pride, O man, whose boast and hope is that you mortify all the things which are of your own doing and that you seek the life to come in Christ, whose firstfruits we have received in this life. The whole life we live we owe to the grace and gift of God, for it is God who gives us to will and to work for His own good will.” Again: “Why do you set yourself forth as having your own gifts, when you rather ought to be giving thanks to the Giver for the gifts you have received? For what do you have that you have not received?”
Ambrose (De voc. gent., bk. 1, ch. 3): “The same nature that was good, which was made bad in quality and made weak, is restored when man returns to piety; it is not another substance that is created in him. This he does not accomplish except by the grace of the Savior, who repairs His work with His own work. What perishes in a nature is not restored save by the author of that nature.” Ibid.: “Because his faith has been destroyed, his hope abandoned, his understanding blinded, his will taken prisoner, man does not find within himself anything by which he could be restored.”
Jerome (on Proverbs 16): “Whoever attributes to himself the good he has done, though he appears to work no evil with his hands, has already lost the innocence of his heart in that he preferred himself to the Bestower of good things.”
Augustine (De grat. et lib. arbit., ch. 15): “The will in us is always free, but it is not always good, etc. But it happens through grace that man is a person of good will who before was a person of evil will.” De dogmat. eccles. (ch. 6): “We live more safely if we give everything to God, but not if we commit ourselves partly to Him and partly to ourselves.”
Chrysostom (Homily de Adam et Eva): “Out of vessels of wrath He makes vessels of mercy, which is perceived to be such a matter of divine work alone that an act of thanksgiving and confession of praise is always given to God who works this for the correction of such vessels.” On Psalm 118: “You who are good people, attribute that gift to God and assume for yourselves what has been given to you, lest you lose what you have, and let the truth tell you just what you have that you have not received.” On Acts, homily 30: “Let us think that nothing is our own. In fact, even faith itself is not our own work. That is not ours but God’s. Hear the apostle as he says, ‘Even this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God’ [Eph. 2:8].”
§ 45. The second class will be assigned to the sort of statements in which they say that free choice with respect to spiritual actions has been lost and that it can accomplish nothing except in the direction of sin.
Ambrose (De voc. gent., bk. 2, ch. 2): “The unsteady will of man has nothing in its own powers except a facility for peril, because the changeable will which is not controlled by an immutable will hurries toward evil all the faster as it is directed the more keenly to an action.”
Augustine (Retract., bk. 1, ch. 15): “How much is there which the will can accomplish under the reign of desire, unless perhaps, if devout, it prays for help? For it is free to such a degree because to such a degree it is freed and to such a degree it is called a ‘will.’ Otherwise, what must properly be called the ‘will’ would be all desire.” Letter 89 ad Hilar.: “Freedom without grace is nothing but arrogance, not freedom.” Letter 107: “We have lost the free choice to love God because of the greatness of the first sin.” Ench. (ch. 30): “Man uses his free choice badly and destroys both himself and it. For since he sins with free choice, sin was the victor and free choice has also been lost, for a person surrenders himself as a slave to him by whom he has been conquered.” Cont. Fortun. (disp. 2): “I say that there was a free choice of the will in the man who was created first. He was made in such a way that nothing at all resisted his will, if he willed to keep the commandments of God. But after he sinned with his free will, we who have descended from his line have fallen into necessity.” Contra duas epist. Pelag. (bk. 1, ch. 3): “Choice will not be free for good if the Liberator has not freed it, but man does have free choice in evil.” Book 3, ch. 8: “Captive free choice accomplishes nothing except in the direction of sin, but it does not accomplish anything for righteousness unless divinely freed and helped.” Contra Julian. (bk. 2): “Here you want a person to be perfected. If only it were by the gift of God and not by the free—or, rather, the enslaved—choice of one’s own will!” De corr. et grat. (ch. 13): “Before grace we have free choice, but it is not freed: free of righteousness, a slave to sin.” Hypogn. (bk. 3): “The free choice for the possibility of the good which was lost by the fault of the first man strays away from fellowship with the righteous.” Sermon 2 de verb. apost.: “It is true that, when man was created, he received great powers of free choice, but he lost them by sinning.” Sermon 13 de verb. apost.: “Surely, if the help of God is missing, you will be able to do nothing good. Indeed, you act without His help with your free will, but badly. Your will, which is called free, is sufficient for this, but by acting badly it becomes a damnable slave.”
Chrysostom (Homily 1 advent.): “Before the fall we had the free choice to do well, but not afterward, because after sin we are unable by our own power to escape from the hand of the devil. Rather, just as a ship whose rudder has been broken is driven wherever the storm wants, so we are led by the devil from sin to sin, nor thus far will we be allowed to do anything except what the devil himself wills. And unless God frees us with His strong hand of mercy, we shall remain in the bonds of sin until death.”
Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 81): “We are oppressed by no other yoke than one of a voluntary slavery. Thus we are miserable because of our slavery, and inexcusable because of our will, because the will, though it was free, made itself a slave to sin. Under this voluntary and wickedly free necessity the soul is held as both free and slave: slave because of necessity, free because of the will.”
John of Salisbury (Polycraticus, bk. 2, ch. 2): “Man is subject to the just judgment of God because he was unwilling to abstain from sin when he could. Now he cannot abstain, though he may wish to. Yet in this alone free choice is still active in him: it is sufficient for a work of wickedness. But he does not rise up to good unless grace comes ahead of him to help.”
§ 46. Into the third class must be placed the declarations in which they attribute the beginning of good impulses to divine grace.
According to Augustine (De bono persev.), Ambrose (commentary on Luke) writes: “The will of men is prepared by God. For when God is honored by a saint, it is by the grace of God.” [Ambrose] (De vocat. gent., bk. 1, ch. 9): “Although it is possible for man to not want good, yet he does not have the power to want good unless it has been given to him. His nature contracted the former through sin; his nature received the latter through grace.” Book 2, ch. 9: “It is necessary for one to come to God by the leadership of God. We are not sufficient even to think anything spiritual except through the grace of God [cf. 2 Cor. 3:5].”
Augustine (Retract., bk. 1, ch. 22): “It is within the power of man to change his will for the better” (which he explains as follows), “but this power is nothing unless it is given by God, about whom it is said, ‘He gave them power to become the children of God’ [John 1:12]. For though it may be in our power to act as we will, nothing has that power as much as the will itself, but the will is prepared by God.” Letter 105: “It remains for us to attribute faith itself, from which all righteousness begins, not to human choice, by which they themselves are extolled, nor to any preceding merits, because from them begin whatever good things are merits. Rather, we confess that it is a free gift of God, if we understand it as true grace, that is, without merits.” Letter 106: “The grace of God precedes every good work, and this happens with the will accompanying rather than leading, coming along rather than going before.” Enchirid. (ch. 32): “Let the whole matter be given to God who prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it once it has been prepared; for the good will of man precedes many gifts of God but not all. What it does not precede, this itself is in them and itself is what precedes the one who does not will so that he wills, and follows the willing, lest he will in vain.” Contra duas epist. Pelag. (bk. 1): “Indeed, subsequent grace does aid the good intent of man, but that intent would not exist were it not that grace came before it, and the zeal of man which is called good, however great it may be when it begins to exist, must be helped by grace. Yet it does not begin without grace but is inspired by God.” De grat. et lib. arb. (ch. 2): “It is certain that our own will is required for us to do good, but we do not have it from our own powers, but God works in us to will.” Chapter 16: “It is certain that when we will, it is we who will, but He causes us to will about whom it is said, ‘It is God who works in us to will’ [Phil. 2:13].” Chapter 17: “Who is it who had begun to give love, however small, except He who prepares the will and perfects with cooperation what He begins by operation, because He Himself by beginning it works in us to will, and in perfecting He cooperates with us as we will?” Ibid.: “Without us God works that we will, but when we will to act He cooperates with us,” etc. De corrept. et grat. (ch. 1): “To desire grace is the beginning of grace.” De dogmat. eccles. (ch. 17): “Holy thinking, good intent, devout counsel, and every command of one’s good will come from God, because through Him, without whom we can accomplish nothing, we can accomplish something good.”
Chrysostom (on Genesis 7, homily 24,): “It is impossible for us to do something good correctly without having grace from on high.” On the Epistle to the Philippians (sermon 8): “God gives us both the readiness and the efficacy to act.”
Fulgentius (Ad Monim., bk. 1): “No human being is sufficient either to think or to do anything good without being helped by the free gift of divine assistance. For from Him comes the beginning of the good will; from Him, the capability of good work; from Him, persistence in good behavior,” etc.
Anselm (Medit. redemt., ch. 4): “From You I have the power to desire. Let me have from You the power to obtain what I desire.” De concord. grat. et lib. arbit.: “Just as no one receives an uprightness of the will without prevenient grace, so no one preserves it without subsequent grace.”
§ 47. The fourth class includes the statements in which they distinguish the objects of free choice, so that what man can accomplish in civil matters and what he can accomplish in spiritual matters can be understood.
Ambrose (De vocat. gent., ch. 2): “In every soul a will exists naturally, through which it hungers for that which pleases it or declines what displeases it. As concerns its natural impulse, there are two kinds: the sensual and the soulish [animalis]. But when the grace of God is present, there comes to it a third kind by the gift of the Spirit so that it can become spiritual.” (But he assigns the following to the soulish will: not serving the body and pleasure shamefully, and restraining its desires with rules of righteousness and honesty.)
Augustine (De fid. ad Petr., ch. 32): “Most firmly hold and do not doubt that man (so long as he is not ignorant of letters nor prohibited by imbecility nor adversity) can either read the words of the holy Law and Gospel or hear them from the mouth of a preacher. But no one has the power to perceive with his heart what he hears physically and to will to do the commands of God without God going ahead of him with His grace, without a divinely given good will and ability.” Hypogn. (bk. 3): “We confess that free choice belongs to all men, and it possesses the judgment of reason—not that it is sufficient without God either to begin or to finish those things which have to do with God, but only among the works of this present life,” etc.
Maxentius (Confess. de Christo): “We believe that natural free choice has power for nothing else except only to discern and desire carnal or worldly things which have nothing to do with God, but can perhaps appear glorious as far as man is concerned. But he cannot think nor desire nor will nor complete the things which pertain to eternal life except through the infusion and operation of the Holy Spirit.”
§ 48. The fifth class is constituted by the pronouncements in which they testify that willing and assenting to grace is not a matter of our powers but of a renewed will.
Ambrose (De voc. gent., bk. 1, ch. 9): “When grace is rejected by many, that is a matter of their own wickedness; but when it is accepted by many, that is a matter of divine grace and man’s will.” (Obviously this is a will already renewed, for he continues as follows:) “Grace itself accomplishes this with all sorts of healing and helping, so that in him whom it calls it prepares its own best receiver and a will which serves its gifts.”
The second Council of Orange [Conc. Arausic. 2.] (session 2, canon 6): “If anyone says that mercy is conferred upon those who believe, desire, and give effort without the grace of God, but confesses that it does not happen in us divinely that we believe and will through the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, let him be anathema.” Canon 7: “If anyone should confirm that he7 is able to agree to the preaching of the Gospel through the power of nature without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, he is being deceived by a heretical spirit.”
Augustine (Contra duas epist. Pelag., bk. 1, ch. 19): “Christ does not say ‘leads’ so that we would think that in some way the will precedes. Rather, He says ‘draws’ [John 6:44], for who is drawn who was already willing? Yet no one comes unless he is willing. Therefore he is drawn to will in wonderful ways by Him who knows how to work within the very hearts of people, not that people may believe unwillingly, something which cannot happen, but that they may be made willing from being unwilling.” De praedest. et grat. (ch. 11): “The willing itself is not of ourselves but is a gift of God, because from Him we have it that we both will and do [cf. Phil. 2:13].” De praedest. sanct. (ch. 3): “I used to think that our consent to the Gospel preached to us was our own doing and came from ourselves. Some small works written before my episcopate reveal my error.”
Prosper (De ingr.):
The apostle may run about the world;
He may preach, exhort; he may plant and water;
He may upbraid and insist;
He may travel whatever path he finds
Opened to the Word.
Nevertheless that his hearer may be stirred
By these pursuits, neither teacher nor pupil
But grace alone accomplishes and turns
What has been planted into heavy fruit.
He describes that grace in this way:
It does not persuade merely with gentle advice
And exhortation. It changes minds and reshapes
Them within. By its power to create it fashions
A new vessel from a broken one.
Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 1): “In the way that light pours around blind or closed eyes in vain, so the natural man does not perceive the things which are of God.” De grat. et lib. arbit.: “This is the entire work of free choice: that it consents. But it is not that the consent is of itself, because we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves [2 Cor. 3:5], which is less than consenting,” etc.
Statements of the Scholastics and of the Papists themselves.
§ 49. In fact, the Scholastic and Papist writers themselves at times speak quite suitably about this subject.
Lombard (Sent., 2, dist. 25, letter G):
Four states of free choice in man can be noted. For before sin, nothing would keep him from good and nothing would drive him to evil. He did not have a weakness for evil, and he did have a helper for good. At that time his reason could judge without error, and his will could hunger for good without difficulty. But after sin and before the restoration of grace, he is oppressed and overcome by concupiscence and has a weakness toward evil, but does not have grace for good, and thus he can sin and cannot but damnably sin. But after restoration and before confirmation, he is oppressed but not overcome by concupiscence and indeed has a weakness toward evil, but he also has grace for good so that he is able to sin on account of freedom and weakness and is able not to sin because of freedom and helping grace. Nevertheless he does not yet have the absolute power to not sin or to be unable to sin, because his weakness has not yet been perfectly absorbed and grace not perfectly consummated. But after confirmation, when his weakness has been completely consumed and grace consummated, he will be unable to be either oppressed or overcome. He will then be unable to sin.
Through sin natural goods are corrupted and free things are removed, for man incurs punishment for sin in the corruption and suppression of his free choice. Therefore the freedom of choice has been corrupted and partially destroyed through sin. Hence Augustine (Enchirid.) writes: “In using his free choice, man wickedly destroys both himself and it, for when he sins by his free choice, sin overcomes and free choice is lost. For a person becomes a slave to him by whom he has been overcome.” Behold: he says that man has lost free choice not because he did not have free choice after sin, but because he lost the freedom of his choice, and, indeed, not all freedom but freedom from wretchedness and sin.
In letter I he explains “three modes of freedom, namely, from necessity, from sin, and from wretchedness,” and he says that “through sin freedom from sin was lost, but not from necessity.”
Thomas (De verit., q. 24): “Free choice, by doing what in it lies without grace, cannot dispose nor prepare itself to have grace.” [ST] (1.2., q. 189, art. 3): “In the state of his corrupt nature, man cannot love God above all things out of his purely natural [qualities].” [ST] (2.2., q. 4, art. 4): “By grace God creates faith not only when it begins to exist but also so long as faith endures. God always works the justification of people just as the sun always works the illumination of the air.”
Guilielmus Parisiensis quite suitably explains the very necessary distinction in the question of the freedom of choice “between civil and spiritual righteousness.”
Gregory of Rimini, a professor at Paris (Sent., bk. 2, dists. 26–28), accuses the rest of the Scholastics: “They were given over to the Pelagian heresy in the doctrine of the free choice of man.” And he also speaks honorably about Thomas Bradwardine, professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, who ten years before Gregory—that is, around 1330—published a three-part work on the grace of God against free choice.
Johannes Driedo (De concord. lib. arbit. et praedest.): “A person who does not yet believe but has been left to himself in only the talents of his vitiated nature cannot prepare himself to receive the grace of faith.”
Johannes Ferus, the Minorite (commentary on John 1:23): “The old birth and thus all the powers of nature which are transfused by natural propagation into the offspring are condemned in Scripture; the thinking of our heart is cursed; our reason, mouth, hands, feet, and all things within us are wrapped in sin and darkness.” Hence the Index expurgat. Hisp. (f. 123) orders the following axioms to be blotted out of the commentaries of Ferus: “Nature itself produces no other than evil fruits.” “Our will is evil and the root of all evils,” etc.
Cassander (Consult., art. 18, from Bonaventure): “It is characteristic of pious minds that they attribute nothing to themselves, but the entire matter to the grace of God. Hence, however much one may grant to the grace of God, he does not depart from piety even if he may take away from the power of nature and of free choice. But when anything is taken away from the grace of God, and when what belongs to grace is attributed to nature, then danger can occur.”
Bellarmine (De lib. arbitr., bk. 4, ch. 10) says that “free choice must be proven even to some Catholics.”
1 animalis homo, the Vulgate’s translation for ψυχικὸς ἅνθρωπoς in 1 Cor. 2:14, which the KJV and many other English Bibles translate as “natural man.” The term translated here as “soulish” means “endowed with soul” but not endowed with the Holy Spirit.
2 I.e., the linking verb “are.” See Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, eds., A Latin Dictionary: Founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary, Revised, Enlarged, and in Great Part Rewritten (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879), s.v. “substantivus” II.
3 On “subjects” and their “adjuncts,” see above, p. 62 n. 1 and p. 114 n. 1.
4 See above, p. 33 n. 1; cf. below, p. 260 n. 4.
5 I.e., ζωoγoνέω.
6 Vindication of All the Articles of Luther Condemned by the Recent Bull of Leo X (1520), WA 7:147.
7 Read se with Cotta instead of non.