Section VI: The Powers of Free Choice in Spiritual Matters, § 80.

Section VI: The Powers of Free Choice in Spiritual Matters, § 80.

CHAPTER VI: REFUTATION OF THE ERRORS

OF BELLARMINE ON FREE CHOICE

SECTION I: ON THE DISTINCTION

BETWEEN SUFFICIENT AND EFFECTUAL AID

§ 56. But passing over the others, let us return to Bellarmine. In order to make his opinion more clear to us, it should be noted that, among the remaining divisions of grace (in De grat. et lib. arb., bk. 1, ch. 2), he lists in fifth place that which is between “sufficient aid, or grace, and effectual aid.” He calls the former aid that “by which God calls, rouses, and is prepared to help a person by directing, protecting, and working together with him in such a way that he can in truth be so roused and called so as to want to believe, to want to be converted, to want to do something good, and yet he really may not want to believe or be converted or do something good.” On the other hand, the latter is what he calls that “by which God calls, rouses, and aids a person by directing, protecting, and working together with him in such a way that the man who is so roused and called actually does want it and actually does believe, is converted, does good.” This distinction he tries to prove in the following ch. 11.

We respond. We readily admit that there are many people who resist the Holy Spirit as He begins His work of conversion, who despise the counsel of God against themselves [cf. Luke 7:30], who judge themselves unworthy of eternal life [cf. Acts 13:46], and who in this way by their own fault reject the grace of conversion. But we deny that grace itself must consequently be divided into sufficient and effectual grace since, in fact, there is one and the same grace which works in believers and is rejected by unbelievers.

Where effectual grace comes from.

In ch. 12 [Bellarmine] disputes about “from where effectual grace is obtained.” In the first place, he repudiates the opinion of those who “establish effectual grace in human assent and cooperation in such a way that grace is said to be effectual on the basis of the result [ab eventu], namely, that an effect occurs, and the effect occurs because the human will cooperates.” This opinion, he says, “destroys the efficacy of grace and at the same time [destroys] predestination.” Next, he also repudiates the opinion of those who teach that “effectual grace is a natural [physica] action of God which determines the will to will and to choose the good which was breathed into him by the grace which rouses.” This opinion, he says, “destroys sufficient grace and free choice.” But he himself embraces this opinion: “Effectual grace consists in internal illumination and inspiration.”

§ 57. We respond. Since the very point of conversion, so to speak, is under consideration, we must navigate carefully, lest we be carried either to the Pelagian Scylla or to the Charybdis of the absolute decree. Therefore we proceed in this way. First of all, the extremes of which the Holy Spirit warns us to beware in this area must be avoided. For the efficacy of grace for conversion must not be attributed to the cooperation of the human will, nor should it be attributed to an absolute decree of God selecting certain people. The middle path must be taken. It must be acknowledged that it is the work of divine grace alone that many are converted and saved; it must be acknowledged that many are not converted and perish only by the fault of those who perish.

In this [statement] the Christian mind can rest securely with devout simplicity, even if it may be unable to free itself from all difficulties, especially from those which are raised about individual people who are to be converted. But because Bellarmine attributes to us the idea of assigning the efficacy of grace to a natural [physica] action¹ of God by which He directs the will to will and to choose the good which had been inspired in that will by the grace which rouses, our position must be explained in detail.

In His work of conversion, the Holy Spirit finds the sort of subject which has no cooperative powers. In fact, the mind of the still unregenerate person is blind, and the will is opposed and hostile to God. Therefore grace accomplishes the following with every kind of curing and assisting: it makes the person it intends to convert willing from an unwilling person, obedient from a hostile person. But that does not happen in such a way that it converts the person or provides him with strength as if the person were neither thinking nor understanding, but rather the Holy Spirit grants new powers with which it is possible to assent to His calling, and yet is not immediately in a single instant divesting the person of the old freedom—or, rather, the wretched slavery—with which it could reject the offered grace. Therefore far be it from us to say that the grace of the Holy Spirit sets the will to want and choose the good by some natural [physica] action in conversion (for in this way all whom the Holy Spirit wants to convert would be converted by an immutable necessity). In fact, the Holy Spirit suffers Himself to be resisted, permits His work to be hindered, and sees that many judge themselves unworthy of conversion and of the fruit of conversion, eternal life itself.

Therefore in all men there exists a will after the fall. But it is not of its own powers that a will should will a spiritual good, since it serves sin. Therefore in conversion the Holy Spirit renews the will of man and grants it new powers such that, after it is equipped with them, it can actually will and choose the good. But meanwhile, on the basis of the inherent corruption of his nature, a person is able to not want the good, and he can impede the work of the Holy Spirit. And thus it can in no way be said that in conversion grace determines the will to want and to choose the good by some natural [physica] action.

SECTION II: ON THE DISTINCTION

BETWEEN OPERATING AND COOPERATING GRACE

§ 58. All this will become clearer from the following. Indeed, Bellarmine (ch. 14 and following) clarifies the division between “operating and cooperating grace.” (He says the former is that which “effects the first action of the deliberate will in man, such as conversion, whether that be from unbelief to faith or from other sins to repentance.” He calls the latter that which “effects the consequent acts of the will, such as desiring to pray, desiring to do good works.”) Especially [he clarifies] the statement of Augustine (De grat. et lib. arb., ch. 17): “He works it without us that we will, but when we will and will in such a way that we act, He cooperates with us.” Bellarmine explains this as follows:

According to one sort of cause, God moves with respect to [man’s] deliberate willing, and the will is not moving but is merely moved. Nevertheless, according to another sort of cause, God concurs as a mover to produce the same act of willing, but the will then is both moved and moving. And thus both are true: that God works the deliberate willing itself to will without us, and He does not work without us. For if we consider the efficient and natural [physica] cause of that act, it is not only God through specific aid but also the will through free choice. In this way the willing is God’s and ours, and we cooperate in it with God, and God does not work it without us. But if we consider the moral cause² of the same action—that is, the cause which moves by persuading, exhorting, and advising—the cause is God alone. But according to this kind of cause, the will is not moving but is only moved, for the will itself does not drive itself by persuading and exhorting to want what it does not want; rather, God speaks within the soul with His own inspirations and encourages and persuades it to will.

These are the words of Bellarmine, who later applies this example to the topic:

Let there be a man who needs to sail to the Orient, and yet is unwilling to do this; then let someone come to him and finally persuade him with many proffered reasons and make a willing person out of an unwilling one. Then, when the second person perceives that the first is willing to sail, he gets him a ship, money, and the rest of the supplies necessary for those who sail. Accordingly, the second man will be able to say truthfully: “I alone caused that fellow to be willing to undertake the voyage.” For even if the other heard the reasons given and considered them and finally offered his assent, nevertheless he did not persuade himself, nor did he move himself. But his friend moved and persuaded him. Furthermore, as far as the execution of the will is concerned, that friend cannot say, “I alone took him to the Orient,” but “I alone helped him and cooperated with him so that he would sail suitably.” If in fact the fellow who was persuaded by his friend decided to sail, without doubt he did not fail himself but began to consider what he had to do and to apply his effort and industry to his coming voyage.

§ 59. We respond. He says and argues these points craftily. It is certain that it is we who will when we will, but that willing does not stem from residual natural powers of free choice but from those new qualities given by the Holy Spirit. The illustration which Bellarmine uses clearly shows that he claims that in conversion the will of man is moved by being persuaded, inspired, and roused so that it exercises its natural powers, and thus cooperates with grace immediately in the first act of conversion. Indeed, the sailor whom Bellarmine sends off to the Orient is persuaded and turned into a willing person from being an unwilling one in such a way that he has the source of this will and work within himself, which is aroused by external exhortations and persuasions and is drawn into action. But unregenerate man has not been equipped with such an inner source to will the good and is, in fact, dead in his sin. As no strength and power at all remain in a dead body with which it can restore physical life to itself or cooperate for its own resuscitation, so a person who is spiritually dead with regard to sin has no faculty or active power to call himself back into life or to cooperate in his own resuscitation.

Here there must be a repetition of something from the doctrine of original sin which was explained earlier [On Original Sin (Commonplace XII), §§ 49–54, 70–80]: through the fall of the first people not only was original righteousness lost, but also [human] nature was wretchedly corrupted. Therefore original sin consists not only in the loss of integrity but also in the addition of corruption, which corruption is present in the manner of a vicious disposition [habitus]. For just as exterior actions, to which the sinful are carried with unhindered vehemence, bear witness that a vicious disposition lurks in their will, so the copious crop of actual sins born out of the heart bears witness that the corruption is present in [human] nature by way of a vicious disposition. But it is not an acquired disposition, but an innate disposition. Hence it is not removed by contrary acts,³ as is an acquired disposition.⁴ Rather, as it was contracted by generation, so it can be destroyed or diminished only through the regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Therefore for the will of man to will the good in conversion, it is not enough that the will be moved by being persuaded, exhorted, and advised. Rather, it needs first to be given new powers to will and to embrace the good, because it is, in fact, not only sleeping in its sins, but it even disgracefully serves them and cannot help but serve them of itself and of its own powers. The will needs not just persuasion but also change, not just healing but also renewal, not an exterior beating but an interior drawing.

No one denies that man’s will wills, that his will believes, and that we believe only when we are willing. But it is God who makes us will, yet He does this not only by persuading, encouraging, and advising the will but by freeing it from the slavery of sin, by changing it effectually, by renewing it, by endowing it with new powers for good. This is the genuine meaning of Augustine, as is clear from all the statements cited earlier [§§ 44–48]. De grat. et lib. arb. (ch. 16): “It is certain that it is we who will and act when we will and act, but it is He who works both to will and to act” (But how? Only by persuading and encouraging? Pay attention to what follows!) “by granting the will very effectual powers, about which it is written: ‘God works in us to will and to do’ [Phil. 2:13].” Contra duas epist. Pelag. ad Bonif. (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. sanct. (ch. 3): “It is a mistake,” he says, “to think that our consent to the Gospel preached to us is of our own [power] and of our own selves.”

Ambrose (De vocat. gent., 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.”

Maxentius: “We can neither think nor will anything spiritual except through the inward infusion and working of the Holy Spirit.”

[Second] Council of Orange, canon 6: “Whoever does not confess that by God it happens in us that we believe and will through the infusion and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, let him be anathema.”

But on the contrary, in regard to the possibility of the [human] nature, Augustine (De nat. et grat., ch. 53) asserts that it is “wounded, injured, vexed, ruined, and has a need not for a false defense but for a true confession.”

Consequently, Bellarmine does not yet extricate himself from the nets of Pelagius as he attributes the following to operating grace: it moves the will by persuading, exhorting, and advising, but meanwhile it leaves to the will of man that it freely agrees by consenting and by actively producing the act of conversion through free choice, as he says in this very chapter. For Pelagius finally is driven by the power of orthodox truth and also begins to say that “grace aids a person’s good intent, and yet does not force a zeal for virtue on him if he resists” ([cited by] Augustine, Contra duas epist., bk. 4, ch. 6). [Augustine again] (Contra duas epist., bk. 1, ch. 18): “No one is forced by the power of God into either good or bad unwillingly, but he does either good or evil by his own will. Instead, he is always helped in a good work by the grace of God and is stirred up to a wicked work by the suggestions of the devil.”

Is freedom from immutability required for freedom of choice?

§ 60. Bellarmine (De grat. et lib. arb., bk. 3, ch. 5) goes on and sets out to prove that “for free choice both freedom from compulsion and freedom from necessity” (immutability) “are required.”

We respond briefly that Scripture attributes some freedom to do the external works of the Law even to unregenerate man, thus no immutable necessity exists in the case of sins which militate against external discipline. But if the question involves the inner defilement and corruption of our inborn nature, then we confess that the will of unregenerate man is a slave and captive of sin by the necessity of immutability, for it does not of itself and by its own powers have the ability to put aside corruption, etc. Therefore if Bellarmine thinks that freedom from necessity or immutability is required for the essential elements of free choice so that man can will or not will the good on the basis of his choice, we say that this sort of free choice has been completely lost. But if he concedes that freedom from coercion is enough for the essential elements of free choice—namely, that man wills evil necessarily, and cannot do anything but will evil, and yet wills that evil voluntarily and not by compulsion—we concede that such a freedom of choice still survives in man after the fall.

From this it is understood why the ancient fathers who wrote against Pelagius sometimes say that the free choice of the will has been ruined and lost, but also sometimes say that it was not lost but only corrupted. In the former statements they are speaking about freedom of choice according to the first meaning, and in the latter they are speaking about the freedom of choice according to the second meaning. But one can pass an utterly correct judgment about this entire argument of Bellarmine—whether freedom of choice necessarily requires freedom from necessity or immutability—on the basis of the statements of Augustine and Bernard in which they say that the will of unregenerate man is free to sin, and yet is a slave to sin and is lost to sin; likewise, that free choice without grace has no power except to sin. Bernard (De grat. et lib. arb.) says: “For 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, because no one ought to be called nor can be called good or evil unless he is willing.”

§ 61. But let us listen to Bellarmine. (1) He cites a passage from Ecclus. 15[:14]: “God left [him in the power of his own choice],” etc.

(2) The things which he brings out from the Council of Trent and from the decrees of the more recent popes have no place with us.

(3) The fathers who contrast necessity to freedom mean the necessity of compulsion but not that of immutability. Some are also defining free choice in man before the fall; some are discussing freedom in external actions, which we concede to man even after the fall.

(4) The rational arguments he offers are of less importance: “If freedom from compulsion sufficed for free choice, it would follow that even herd animals would have free choice.” We respond. This childish game of Bellarmine is unworthy of his intelligence. We say that unregenerate man sins necessarily and yet freely, because the corrupt will is carried voluntarily to evil without compulsion. It is disgraceful sophistry to conclude from this that brute animals, too, act freely when they are driven willingly and without coercion to fodder! In man a spontaneous movement develops out of the will or the rational appetite, while in brute animals the spontaneous movement arises out of their natural instinct and sensitive appetite.

Second: “It will follow that children, the insane, and the dreaming have the use of free choice, because they act voluntarily.” We respond. By the same sophistry a spontaneous movement develops in children, the insane, and the dreaming not from their use of reason but from their use of the sensitive appetite.

Third: “It will follow that God begot the Son through free choice, because He begot Him without being coerced.” We respond. This proves our position. God begot the Son necessarily (immutably) and yet freely, because He was not compelled to do this. Therefore surely necessity (of immutability) and freedom do not conflict immediately.

Fourth: “No question would remain about free choice.” We respond. No, indeed, a question does remain, because here this very question is asked: has man been endowed after the fall with the freedom in regard to good and evil with which he was equipped before the fall?

Finally: “These statements are conflicting: that free choice is removed from compulsion but not from necessity; since it is an elective power which cannot be comprehended together with a determination to one thing.” We respond. There is choice in the category of evils, so that one can be chosen more than another; nor is evil desired by man as evil, but under the appearance of good, because the will of man, given over to the slavery of sin, has subjected itself to the control of the sensitive appetite. Therefore he selects that which he judges to be good and is carried to it with unhindered vehemence; meanwhile, the very essence of the will remains and does not stop being an elective power.

§ 62. In ch. 6 Bellarmine responds to some statements of Augustine and Bernard which prove that the will of man has been changed for the worse by sin and creates a necessity for itself so that the necessity, because it is voluntary, is unable to excuse the will, nor is the will capable of excluding necessity, since the necessity is in some way voluntary, etc. But he responds in such a way that he confirms rather than overturns our opinion. He concedes that “one hungers for happiness necessarily and yet freely, because the will is free as far as concerns exercise and specification in the selection of other things.” In the same way also we say that man sins necessarily and yet freely, because the will is free as far as specification in the categories of sins is concerned.

He concedes that “free choice is not removed but rather is confirmed through the necessity of not sinning in eternal life.” In the same way also we say that the essence of the will by which one sins unfreely is not removed through the wretched slavery of sin to which man is subject in this life before conversion.

He concedes that “conditioned necessity does not conflict with freedom, but an absolute necessity does.”⁵ He posits as an example of conditioned necessity that “a bad tree cannot produce good fruits, and yet it can become a good tree.” We also say the same thing, that the necessity of sinning which exists in unregenerate man is conditioned but not absolute, for he can be converted, renewed, and changed so that, like a tree which at first is bad but later is returned to goodness, he produces good fruits.

Finally, [Bellarmine] argues (bk. 3, ch. 16): “God has free choice, and yet He does nothing except good.” But consider what Pelagius argues, as cited by Augustine (De nat. et grat., ch. 46), that anything that is restricted by a natural necessity is deprived of the choice and deliberation of the will, and it will become clear from what school this argument of Bellarmine has come.

SECTION III: EXAMINATION OF BOOK 3 OF BELLARMINE,

ON THE NATURE OF FREE CHOICE

The battle of the Scholastics on free choice.

§ 63. Bellarmine begins to discuss the nature of free choice in bk. 3 and examines the various disagreements of the Scholastics in regard to this subject. (1) Lombard wants the term “free choice” to mean “the conjunction of two acts,” that is, of the judgment of reason and of the selection of the will. Durandus thinks that it is used “properly in reference to an act of reason,” that is, in reference to judgment. Thomas takes free choice to signify “an act of the will alone.”

(2) Hervaeus teaches that free choice “properly consists in an act, not in a disposition [habitus] or potentiality.” Bonaventure establishes it “in a natural disposition that stems from reason and from the will.” Albert teaches: “Free choice is a potentiality perfected through a superadded disposition, yet a natural one, not an acquired one.” There are some who teach that free choice is “a universal potentiality which contains within itself all the potentialities of the intellectual and perceiving soul.” It is the opinion of Alexander of Hales that free choice is “a particular potentiality distinct from reason and the will.” Durandus teaches that free choice is “the potentialities of reason and the will themselves, but more of reason.” Scotus claims that free choice is “a single and particular potentiality, namely, the will itself, and that it is free in such a way that it neither depends on nor is determined by the practical judgment of reason.” Thomas and his disciples teach that free choice is “indeed a single and particular potentiality, that is the will itself, but the root of freedom is in the reason.”

(3) Gotfridus argues that “the human will is a passive potentiality.” But Biel wants choice to be “partly passive, partly active.” Thomas and some others make free choice “simply active.”

(4) Occam argues: “The object of free choice is good and evil,” but all the rest claim that the “proper and primary object of the will is only good.”

(5) Lombard, Occam, and Biel claim: “Free choice deals only with future things.” [Gregory] of Rimini asserts: “The beginning of action can be free even in the present, yet some continuation is altogether necessary.” Scotus and others claim: “Not only future actions but also present actions, and not only their beginning but also their continuation, can be present in the power of free choice.”

(6) Scotus teaches: “The primary act of the will or the love of the end is not only elicited from the will but also is simply free.” Capreolus argues: “The primary love of the end is an actual pleasure toward good in general, and the will concurs with that pleasure, but only passively.” Ferrariensis claims: “The act is done effectually by the will itself, but in such a way that it follows from a natural inclination.”

From these disagreements of the Scholastics it appears quite clear what amount of certainty can be hoped for from those who abandon the path of Scripture for the highways of the philosophers.

Does Dr. Luther deprive God of freedom of choice?

§ 64. In ch. 16 Bellarmine proves that “God has free choice” in which He keeps us for Himself and which, in fact, is in harmony with the truth. But the following is unjust: that in the preceding chapter he lists Dr. Luther among those “who strip God of freedom of choice,” because [Luther] (Assertio articulorum, art. 36) argues that “all things happen out of an absolute necessity.”⁶ But no such thing occurs in this passage, and even if it were to occur, God would not yet be deprived of free choice, because necessity is meant in regard to creatures but not in regard to the Creator Himself.

As far as the matter itself is concerned, we admit that Dr. Luther (De servo arbitrio) writes that all things happen out of an absolute necessity, but he explained his intent very clearly in his commentary on Genesis 26. Chemnitz (Loci, part 1, p. 425) says: “Both temples and schools used to echo with great praise of free choice. Therefore these arguments are in opposition to each other: that not even in external matters is choice completely free, nor could this intricate argument be declared at the beginning so distinctly and suitably.”

Erasmus followed the Scholastics on the basis of philosophy and defended the powers of free choice from the judgment of reason rather than from Scripture, with the result that Luther silenced him with his own sword on the basis of Erasmus’s own principles, namely: he kept fighting against his adversary face-to-face with the judgment of reason, contending that all things happen by absolute necessity, clearly “in order that natural reason, that arrogant mistress, may learn to subject herself to the Word” (as he says in vol. 3 of the Latin edition of Jena, f. 207). Elsewhere he writes and argues clearly that God is not the cause of sin, so he is far from saying that God has no free choice.

SECTION IV: THE EXAMINATION OF BOOK 4 OF BELLARMINE,

ON THE POWERS OF FREE CHOICE IN NATURAL MATTERS

What powers of man there are in the natural knowledge of God.

§ 65. In bk. 4 he begins to discuss the powers of free choice and tries to prove (ch. 2) that “by the powers of nature it can be known that God exists, that He is one,” and other things of this type. In ch. 4 he proves that “general aid is required and is sufficient for natural and civil acts.” We freely concede this, for there is a natural knowledge of God, though it is weak and imperfect. Reason knows a small part of the divine Law and can learn from “common ideas” [ex κoιναῖς ἐννoίαις] and from the book of nature that God exists, that He is just, that He is wise, etc. In addition, even after the fall, man is endowed with some freedom in natural and civil acts. He can in some way avoid external sins and control his external motion [locomotiva]. But this freedom is imperfect, as is clear from the hindrances against this freedom, which shall be explained later in their own place [§§ 115–18].

As to what he writes (in ch. 5) about the contradictions of Luther and Philipp, that “they remove almost every freedom of the human will in external and civil acts altogether,” let Chemnitz (Loci, part 1, toward the end of the chapter De causa peccati) be referred to on this matter. Dr. Luther is not embarrassed to confess with Augustine that he wrote advantageously, thus also in the later editions of the works of Luther those words (from Assert. art. 36), that according to the teaching of Wycliffe all things occur by absolute necessity, have been omitted, as also in his later Loci Philipp explained his intent clearly. The meaning of words must be taken from the circumstances of the one who is speaking. Now, they wrote against the immoderate praisers of free choice, and therefore the same thing happens to them which happened to the fathers of the early church who, when they intended to refute the errors of the Manichaeans, went too far and spoke too indulgently and unsuitably about free choice.

Should human choice be called “enslaved”?

§ 66. In ch. 6 Bellarmine argues: “Great rashness cannot defend the manner of speaking by which the expression ‘free choice’ is changed into the expression ‘enslaved [choice]’: (1) Because the expression ‘enslaved choice’ is unheard of in the church for a full fifteen hundred years.”

We respond. In the church of Christ is the statement of Christ really so strange, John 8:34: “He who commits sin is a slave of sin”? And those words of the apostle, Rom. 6:20: “When you were the slaves of sin you were free from righteousness”?

Augustine (Contra Julian., bk. 3): “Here you” (Pelagians) “want man to be perfected, and, oh, that it were by the gift of God and not be free choice—or, rather, enslaved choice.” Contra duas epist. Pelag. (bk. 3, ch. 8): “The captive free choice avails for nothing but sin.” Enchirid. (ch. 30): “Tell me, what sort of freedom can a bonded slave’s freedom be, except when it delights a person to sin? For he serves freely who does the will of his master, and through this, he who is sin’s slave is free to sin.” Sermon 3 de verb. apost.: “Indeed, you do act without the help of God and with free will, but you act badly. Your will, which is said to be free, is fit for this, and, by acting badly, it becomes a damnable handmaiden. Although I tell you that your will is free without the help of God, it is not free, for to him by whom one is conquered, he is given over as a slave, and everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.”

Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 8): “Under this voluntary and badly free necessity, the soul is held as both slave and free: slave because of necessity, free because of the will.”

(2) [Bellarmine again:] “All the ecclesiastical writers have taught free choice with clear words.”

We respond. Neither do we remove free choice, if it is taken to mean either an inner essential freedom of the will in acting, or a freedom in external and civil actions, or the actual freedom from coercion in the slavery of sin.

(3) [Bellarmine again:] “If the word ‘choice’ is good, it shall have to be retained. But if it is evil, why has it been tolerated in the church for so long?”

We respond. We keep it, but with due and fitting explanation, for we approve neithe the absolute necessity of the Manichaeans nor the Pelagian freedom of choice.

SECTION V: AN EXAMINATION OF BOOK 5 OF BELLARMINE, ON THE POWERS OF FREE CHOICE IN MORAL MATTERS

§ 67. In bk. 5 Bellarmine disputes about the freedom of choice in moral matters, and there, in the first twelve chapters, he deals with the question whether “the morally good works of unbelievers are sins because they are done without faith.” There will be an occasion to speak about this subject later [§§ 103–7].

From ch. 13 to the end of the book he speaks about “free choice in moral matters” and tries to prove that “as far as moral matters are concerned, man has been endowed with free choice in the corrupted state of his nature.” But he does not set forth the actual state of the question and controversy distinctly and clearly enough, for we concede that unregenerate man does have some freedom to do the external works of the Law and that, consequently, in the sins which conflict with exterior discipline there is no necessity of either compulsion or immutability. However, we add that there are various hindrances [impedimenta] of this freedom, both internal and external, which will be enumerated in their own place [§§ 115–18]. Therefore we concede to people who have not yet been reborn some limited freedom of the will in works which are morally good. But because those morally good works are themselves sins before God with regard to their final cause as well as their efficient and formal causes—but especially because the will of unregenerate man cannot by its own powers divest itself of the privation that is born in us—we say that it is the slave and prisoner of sin.

If the scope and clear explanation of our position is observed, it will readily become clear what must be approved and disapproved in the entire and rather prolix treatment of Bellarmine on the freedom of choice in moral matters. For Bellarmine mixes different questions and takes “moral good” to mean not external works of the Law, ethical virtues, and civil righteousness but also the true moral good which is good before God and in the judgment of God. Yet he could have learned even from Vega (De imbecillit. naturae, bk. 2, ch. 12) that these are different questions and that we, too, separate them. Vega says: “Indeed, the Protestants concede freedom to philosophical and civil righteousness but not to spiritual and divine righteousness, that is, regarding external but not internal works of the Law.” Here, too, Bellarmine believes he has found the way for Protestants to be able to be reconciled to Papists in this question. But let us listen to the arguments of Bellarmine.

Arguments in favor of free choice: First, that sin is either necessary or voluntary.

§ 68. (I) “Sin is either necessary or voluntary. If it is necessary, then it is not sin; if it is voluntary, then it can be avoided, and, as a consequence, man will have free choice in moral matters.”⁷

We respond. (1) The Pelagian Coelestius once used this argument, as is clear from Augustine (De perfect. justitiae contra Coelestium, at the very beginning), where Coelestius reasons in this way: “What cannot be avoided is not sin. For neither reason nor justice allows something to be called sin which can in no way be avoided.” But Augustine responds: “Sin can be avoided if corrupted [human] nature is healed by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.” For to the extent that it is not healed, to that extent it does not see what must be done due to its blindness or does not fulfill it because of infirmity.

(2) We admit that some freedom remains for man in external civic sins. But if one asserts in general that “nothing is sin unless it is voluntary”—that is, if it is not done with a deliberate will and cannot be avoided by a human being—then original sin will be completely denied.

(3) By his own fault man fell into the wretched slavery of sin, and he has propagated it to his descendants. Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 81): “The will of man itself, changed for the worse, has caused for itself a necessity, such that since it is a voluntary necessity there exists no excuse for the will.”

(4) At one time it was an axiom of the Pelagians that there is no sin except voluntary sin, that is, unless it was committed by the choice, intent, and action of one’s own will. (Augustine, Haeres. 88; Contra Julian., bk. 3, chs. 1 and 5; De bono persever., bk. 2, chs. 5 and 11; Ad Bonifac., bk. 4, ch. 7; De grat. et peccat. orig., bk. 2, ch. 13; Retract., bk. 1, chs. 13 and 15.)

(5) Hence if the word “voluntary” is taken for freedom from the necessity of coercion, we say that the very corruption of [human] nature, the interior sins themselves, are voluntary since man serves freely and not by coercion. But if the word “voluntary” is taken for the freedom from the necessity of immutability, then we deny that “voluntary” pertains to the nature of sin. For though man before his regeneration is subject to the yoke of sin by the necessity of immutability, yet he truly and properly sins because the first parent of the human race voluntarily hurled himself and all his posterity into that wretched pit and slavery of sin.

Bellarmine objects: “The sin of the first man from which the corruption of [human] nature came forth was, according to the opinion of Calvin, committed by the decree and inevitable will of God.”

We respond. In this point our churches separate themselves from Calvin and confess publicly that Adam subjected himself to that wretched slavery of sin voluntarily and by his own fault.

Bellarmine also objects: “Original sin and the corruption of [human] nature have been dismissed in Baptism so that they are not imputed; therefore sins which have risen from that corruption cannot be imputed unless free will accedes.”

We respond. The nonimputation of the guilt of condemnation does not remove the form [formale] of sin itself, as if sin which is not imputed ceases to exist in and of itself. In fact, it certainly could be imputed, were God to enter into judgment with us.

(6) The devil necessarily and always does evil, and yet he truly sins; how, then, is every sin voluntary?

Bellarmine retorts: “In general it is true that devils necessarily do evil and can do nothing else but do evil. But it is false in particular that all the evils they do they do necessarily, because they are able to not do many things which they do, and thus they commit sins not because of necessity but because of their will.”

We respond. In the same way we also say that unregenerate people cannot but do evil, and yet all the evils which they do they do necessarily, though with respect to external sins they are able to not do many things which they do. What is conceded [here] suffices for us: that devils cannot but do evil, and yet they truly sin. From this it is quite clear that the necessity of immutability does not exclude the true nature of sin, because it is a necessity brought in by its own fault.

(7) Although unregenerate man sins necessarily and cannot do otherwise of himself and of his own powers, yet this is not an absolute necessity, because by the grace of God he can be converted and thus do good. For we do not say with the Manichaeans that some people are irredeemable and earthbound [ἀλύτoυς et χoϊκoύς] such that they cannot be converted by the ordinary dispensation of the Holy Spirit; and hence there is a great difference between the slavery of sin to which the wicked angels are subject and the slavery of sin to which people are delivered up. The will of the devil is incapable of the grace for conversion, but the will of man can be converted through the Holy Spirit. God has set forth means, not for the devils but for human beings, through which means He wants to be effective in their hearts.

How the word “assist” should be understood in this matter.

Bellarmine changes this passive capacity into an active one when he writes insidiously: “As long as cupidity reigns in sinful man, he cannot avoid sin, but he can in an absolute sense, because, with the assistance of God, he can take off cupidity and put on love.” For under the word “assist” (which we do not reject if it is taken in its sound sense) Pelagius, too, used to hide his poison, for he says (according to Augustine, Contra duas epistolas Pelagian., bk. 1, ch. 19): “In every good work man is always assisted by grace” and (bk. 4, ch. 6) “Grace assists the good intent of everyone.” To this Augustine responds (bk. 3, ch. 4): “In the time of the Old Testament, we say that the Holy Spirit was not only the aider (the Pelagians think that His teaching suffices for this [aid]) but even the granter of virtue in those who were sons according to the promise, something which they themselves deny.” Book 2, ch. 9: “Subsequent grace does indeed assist the intent of people, but that intent would not exist if grace were not preceding it.” Enchirid. (ch. 32): “The whole matter must be given to God, who prepares the good will of a person to be assisted and assists it once it has been prepared; for the good will of man precedes many of the gifts of God, but not all of them, but the very one which does not precede, and is itself in them, precedes an unwilling person to make him willing and follows the willing person, lest he will in vain.” From this it is clear that Augustine places assisting grace at that time when prevenient grace works to will without the cooperation of free choice in the unregenerate person, for it assists at that time, lest we will in vain.

(8) Sin is defined by John as “lawlessness” (1 John 3:4), without giving consideration to the voluntary quality.

Bellarmine responds: “In the definition of sin, free choice is included in virtue, because the Law is not given except to those who have free choice. For a rule is given in vain to a person who does not have his own actions within his own power. Otherwise what reason may be given as to why no rules are given to beasts?”

We respond. The Law was given to man and was written in his heart in his state of integrity, when his integrity still had the power for perfect obedience. But if man deprived himself of those powers by his own fault, does God lose any right to demand and require what He had given? Not at all! And if the Law does not pertain except to those who can avoid sins through free choice, original sin in infants will be destroyed by one erasure, for where there is no Law, neither is there lawlessness, and where there is no lawlessness, there is no sin.

[That] where no freedom of choice exists, there is no place for reward or for punishment.

§ 69. (II) [Bellarmine again:] “If no freedom of choice exists in man, there will be no place for reward or for punishment. But this is refuted by the understanding and consensus of the entire human race.”⁸

We respond. (1) If rewards and punishments in the political forum are under discussion, we concede that unregenerate man still does have freedom to direct his external actions and control his external motion [locomotiva]. Accordingly, it is right when rewards are decreed for those who do good and punishments for those who do evil. Anyone who would want to deny this would be subverting the very foundations of governments [politarum], because rewards and punishments preserve societies [respublicas].

(2) If rewards and punishments in the forum of divine judgment are under discussion, a response must be given with distinction, for rewards are either of this life or of the life to come, as also are punishments. God rewards the external discipline even of unregenerate people with the rewards of this life or temporal rewards, and regularly punishes atrocious sins with atrocious punishments so that governments may be preserved. In Exod. 1:21, because “the Egyptian midwives feared God, He built homes for them.” With eternal rewards, God rewards only the works of the reborn, and He does that not on the basis of deserved merit [ex merito condigni] but of gracious mercy, nor does God crown anything in us except His own gifts. In this way the question pertains to the reborn who, we do not deny, are co-workers [συνέργoυς] with God in good works, because the will, now freed from the yoke of sin, cooperates by virtue of new powers granted by the Holy Spirit.

(3) With His utterly just judgment God inflicts temporal and eternal punishments upon those who draw their corrupt nature from Adam and are born liable to original sin, even if they do not yet have the use of free choice by which to increase their hereditary mortgage of sin with new debts for actual sins.

Bellarmine objects: “That which cannot be avoided is not a true fault; otherwise there would be no difference between man and beast.”

We respond. Infants are born necessarily liable to the yoke of original sin, something which they can by no means avoid by their own powers. Therefore [according to Bellarmine] this is not truly and properly called fault, and therefore God is unjust because under this charge He inflicts true and properly named punishment upon them. Rom. 5:14: “Death reigns even over those who do not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam.” Surely this is the difference between unregenerate man and beast: the former has been endowed with a will by which he serves sin freely and without compulsion, though he cannot but sin; but the latter does not act voluntarily, though it does act spontaneously out of natural instinct, something which Bellarmine could learn even from his own Lombard, who writes clearly (Sent., 2, dist. 25, no. 1): “Before the reparation of grace, [man] was unable not to sin, and yet he sins freely, surely because his will is free from the necessity of compulsion, but not from the slavery of sin.”

[Bellarmine] also gives this objection: “If there is no place for good merit without free choice, in the same way there will be no place for evil merit, for the same freedom is required for both reward and punishment.”

We respond. In morally good actions, some sort of freedom still remains, though the will of man is inclined more to evil than to good; this is seen in the very rewards by which it must be aroused and the very punishments by which it must be restrained. But as far as inner corruption and the inner sins of the heart are concerned, in man there is not the same freedom for good and evil merit. Accordingly, the conclusion is invalid, since good comes from all sound causes, as Dionysius said, while evil is from one deficient cause. From this, the wicked works of man are perfectly evil merits, but the good works of man are not perfectly good merits since they are not perfectly good. In addition, there are no good works before God except those of the reborn who are no longer in the state of sin but in the state of grace. It suffices for evil works that Adam, the first parent of our race, from whom we draw the corruption of our nature, received from God a perfect power on behalf of himself and of his posterity.

The question which Bellarmine attaches to his argument as an appendix, concerning the merits of good works, will have its own place later [On Good Works (Commonplace XX), §§ 87–133]. He denies that what Augustine says, “Grace does not come from merit,” is opposed to himself and his party. Thus he should remove what the Scholastics argue about preparation for grace and congruous merit [meritum congrui].

[That] if there were no free will, there would not be some good people and other evil people.

§ 70. (III) “If there were no freedom of choice, there would not be some good people and some evil people, nor some people better than others,” which is false.⁹

We respond. (1) With regard to original corruption, “all have become useless; there is no difference, for all are sinners” (Rom. 3:23).

(2) With regard to external, actual sins, there is some difference in the unregenerate, for Augustine says (Contra Julian., bk. 4, ch. 3): “For Fabricius was less evil than Catiline, not in having true virtues, but in deviating less from true virtues.” Therefore we concede that there is some freedom of choice in the unregenerate with respect to those actions which conflict with external discipline.

(3) The seed of original sin also produces a greater crop in some than in others, because it is fostered in some by a corrupt rearing, by fellowship with debased people, by the habit of sinning, by the adoption of greater license; and to these causes the tyranny of Satan is added.

(4) Although man cannot put aside his inherent wickedness of himself and of his own powers, nevertheless he can be converted by the grace of the Holy Spirit through the ministry of the Word and Sacraments. Accordingly, also in this sense and respect some people are good, but some are evil, and some are more evil than others. For in addition to their inherent depravity, some people despise the Word of God with actual stubbornness, persevere securely in their sins against conscience, and, even though reaching the depths of sins, they hold all admonitions in contempt. But others hear the Word and by the grace of the Holy Spirit develop faith from that hearing [Rom. 10:17], are renewed from day to day, and perfect their sanctification daily [2 Cor. 4:16]. Hence, even though before the restoration of grace no man is good in the sight of God, yet some become good through grace. This is something that does not happen among the obstinate demons.

(5) Indeed, among the demons themselves some are worse and more evil than others (Luke 11:26), yet no one has said that they have been equipped with freedom of choice for good.

Bellarmine retorts: “This argument cannot be resolved through the divine election and reprobation which Calvin brought forth.”

We respond. If Calvin assigns the cause of goodness and wickedness in people to an absolute decree of election and reprobation, let him do so at his own risk, since his idea has nothing in common with us who ascribe the work of conversion solely to the gift of divine grace, and yet who do not approve of an absolute decree of election. Against this, Bellarmine is correct in pressing the point that some of the reborn advance and persevere more every day, but some fall away and perish. But if Bellarmine brings this forth to prove that man cooperates with grace by the powers of his free choice even before his conversion and in conversion itself, he changes the state of the controversy and confuses distinct questions. For it is one thing to speak about the state [of man] before reparation and another to discuss it after reparation has occurred.

If freedom of choice is removed, exhortations, rebukes, etc., are removed.

§ 71. (IV) [Bellarmine again:] “If free choice is removed, then exhortations, rebukes, praises, scoldings, commands, advice, warnings, and other like things are removed, which is absurd.”¹⁰

We respond. (1) Civil laws must certainly be brought to bear only in those actions which are within our power [ἐφ’ ἡμῖν]; but in the ethical and moral precepts, exhortations, rebukes, and other encouragements of this type are valuable for this: that man may control his external discipline and pursue a zeal for virtue. This is something which we do not deny is within his power, though great corruption has also come to the will in this area, as the very incitements of exhortations and rebukes clearly bear witness. We lack these [incitements] for good, and, on the other hand, we are too prone and inclined to evil.

(2) But the divine Law and the exhortations, rebukes, scoldings, and promises added to it are set forth before us (after the fall) not as if with our own powers we could perform all those things which are required of us in regard to the interior obedience of the heart, but in order that we may acknowledge the corruption of our nature and the helplessness of our powers and sigh for Christ, our Physician, so that we may have the power by His grace to fulfill what we cannot do of ourselves.

(3) On this subject Augustine (De grat. et liber. arbitr., ch. 16) argues against the Pelagians, who used the same argument: “The Pelagians think that they know something great when they say, ‘God would not order what He knows cannot be done by man.’ Who would not know this? But He does command some things which we cannot do so that we may know what we should pray for from Him. For it is faith itself which by prayer obtains what the Law commands.” [Augustine again] (the preceding ch. 15):

We should remember that He who says, “Make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit” [Ezek. 18:31], is He who says, “I shall give you a new heart and a new spirit” [cf. Ezek. 11:19; 36:26]. How is it, then, that He who says, “Make for yourselves,” says, “I shall give you”? Why does He command, if He Himself is going to give? Why does He give, if man is going to make, unless because He gives what He orders and assists the one whom He commands to make? Through grace it happens that man has a good will, who previously had an evil will.

Contra duas epist. Pelag. (bk. 2, ch. 10): “I see that God commands nothing to man in the Holy Scriptures for the sake of testing his free choice which is not found either to be given by His goodness or to be demanded to show the assistance of grace.” De corrept. et grat. (ch. 3): “O man, learn in the commandment what you ought to have! Learn in the correction that you do not have it because of your own fault! Learn in prayer whence to receive what you do not have!”

Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 50): “By commanding the impossible, God did not make people liars but humble, that every mouth may be closed and that the entire world may be guilty before God [Rom. 3:23]. Therefore as we receive His command and sense our failure, we shall cry out to heaven, and God will have mercy on us.”

(4) Therefore we say that the Law was set before man in his state of integrity, when he was still equipped with perfect powers of free choice, but when sin overcame him, his free choice was lost. Thus in the state of corrupted nature, “from the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20), not the knowledge of our powers.

Bellarmine objects: (a) “If man were not to have free choice and yet be blamed, it would be as if a person fell into a well from which he could not come out, and then was rebuked because he did not come out. To be sure, such a person could be rebuked because he fell into the well by his own fault, but he would not be rebuked correctly for not having come out of it.”

We respond. By no means! He could be rebuked under both cases, both because he fell into the well by his own fault and because he lost the capability of getting out. And if such a person had been persuaded that he could still come out of the well by his own powers, he would be correctly told: “Come out of the well, then,” so that in this way he would be led to an understanding of his powerlessness. In the same way, through the fall of our first parents we fell into the pit of sin, from which we can by no means come out by our own powers. With this powerlessness is joined an admiration of and persuasion about our own powers, which is apparent from the defenders of free choice. Therefore, in His Commandments, God shows what sort of people we ought to be and what we should have. In His rebuke He shows that by our own fault we do not have this, so that in this way we are led to an understanding of ourselves.

(b) “Free choice indeed needs the grace of God, but no one lacks the grace which one needs in order to do what God commands or to do what He urges, which is why Augustine (De corrept. et grat.) always conjoins these things.”

We respond. From the corruption of man and the precepts given to man it is rightly concluded that he is still endowed with free choice, that is, if the term “free choice” is understood as the will itself; for if man could not will through the grace of the Holy Spirit, such means would never be set forth to him. But, on the other hand, from the corruption [of man] and the precepts [given to man] it is incorrect to conclude that free choice remains in man, that is, if the term “free choice” is taken to mean the faculty by which man can apply himself to grace by his own power. You see, the Holy Spirit effects it that man is willing, not by stirring the natural powers of free choice (which is what Bellarmine wants) but by bestowing new powers on it so as to accomplish this.

Toward the end of this chapter Bellarmine attributes to us the claim that “the renewal of man takes place through faith alone,” which is clearly false, because regeneration is one thing and renewal another, though they are very closely connected. Regeneration takes place through faith and, indeed, through faith alone, but renewal includes many more things, namely, the new spiritual movements kindled in the heart of a person reborn through the Holy Spirit.

The testimonies of Scripture in favor of free choice: First, those which command that something be done.

§ 72. Having explained these four arguments, Bellarmine sets forth six classes of Scriptures. The first “contains those testimonies which command man to do something or not to do something. A commandment is a rule for living well, but a rule is given in vain to a person who cannot fail or who cannot but fail.”¹¹ He says that this is an argument of Augustine (De grat. et lib. arbitr.).

We respond. (1) Whenever Augustine or the other ancients prove free choice from commandments, laws, counsel, etc., they take the expression “free choice” to mean man’s will itself, which certainly was not lost through the fall; or the faculty of acting freely, that is, without compulsion, which man still has even in evil acts themselves; or a certain freedom in moral and external actions—for they are arguing against the Manichaeans, who argued for an absolute¹² necessity.

(2) But if the expression “free choice” is understood as the faculty of succeeding in all the things which are commanded to a person in the Law by one’s own powers, we say that this sort of faculty no longer survives in him, for the Law was not given to man after the fall only so that it would demand external discipline even from the unregenerate and so that it would direct the reborn in a running of good works, but also so that it would rebuke inner sins and the extreme corruption of our nature. It is in this sense that the apostle says that knowledge of sin comes from the Law [Rom. 3:20].

Bellarmine objects: (1) “The Law also has this end purpose, that it sets forth the norm for living correctly. By reason of this end purpose it necessarily demands freedom of choice in man.”

We respond. This is certainly an end purpose of a commandment: to set forth a norm for living rightly. But from this it cannot yet be inferred that man can adapt himself to this norm in every detail by his own powers, since even the reborn themselves complain: “The Law is spiritual, but we are carnal and sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14).

(2) [Bellarmine again:] “Knowing sin through the Law and the Law being the norm for living rightly are the same thing, because the Law is given in such a way that through it sin is recognized and, once recognized, is seen.”

We respond. With this argument he confuses the different uses and end purposes of the divine Law. For there is one use of the Law which it has by rebuking not only exterior sins but also the inner impurity of the heart, and this end purpose applies to the Law only after the fall but not in the state of integrity. In turn, there is another use which it has by prescribing the norm of good works, and this end purpose applies to it both in the state of integrity and after the fall. And this is false: that we can avoid every sin which is rebuked by and recognized from the Law. You see, the Law upbraids the vitiated impulses of our inner concupiscence and reveals that they are sins, yet from these not even the reborn can be completely freed in this life. All the less does this apply to the unregenerate. Accordingly, we deplore our wretchedness in true contrition of heart, we pray that these weaknesses would be covered by the merits of Christ, we resist our desires through the Spirit, and we sigh with deep groans for full freedom in the life to come.

(3) [Bellarmine again:] “Even if the Law cannot be fulfilled solely by the powers of [man’s] nature, yet assuming the aid of grace, man truly does have free choice so that he can fulfill or break the Law.”

We respond. The aid of grace is given in conversion itself by the Holy Spirit, who begins to reform and renew our nature. But the Holy Spirit does not aid in such a way as if we of ourselves were cooperating with Him, but because He is giving us new powers, is kindling new impulses, and is making willing people out of the unwilling. Because this renewal is not immediately perfect but increases day by day until it is perfected in eternal life, so also the perfect fulfillment of the Law in this life is impossible even for the reborn, as will become apparent in its own place [On the Law of God (Commonplace XV), §§ 181–202; On Good Works (Commonplace XX), §§ 62–81].

In this chapter it must be observed that Bellarmine compares the aid of grace to the light necessary for seeing. Therefore as someone can see when the light is shining—that is, can exercise the hidden power to see, which was in him by primary actuality¹³—so also it is apparent that Bellarmine does not take the “aid of grace” to mean an interior (so to speak) transformation of the will but merely the outward assistance of grace necessary for the will to exercise its natural powers.

Therefore when, on the basis of the precepts of the Law and on the basis of the promises and threats added to the Law, it is concluded that men can carry out the commands [of the Law] by their own natural powers, a fallacy of the end purpose [fallacia finis] is being committed. For though men cannot keep these commandments by their own powers, there is still a manifold use of the commandments, promises, and threats with respect both to God Himself and to men. With respect to God, the use of these commandments is: (1) To show what God justly demands of man. (2) To bear witness that He is without blame if people cannot keep that to which they have been justly obligated. The right of a creditor is not removed by the voluntary poverty of a debtor. (3) To set before our eyes the corruption of our nature. From the commanding and forbidding Law comes the knowledge not of our power but of our powerlessness, of depravity, and of sin (Rom. 3:20). (4) To admonish us to look for someone else’s aid, because the Law is “the guide to Christ,” and the grace of God cannot become sweet while the magnitude of our sins has not yet been acknowledged.

The people to whom such commands, promises, and threats are set forth are either devout and reborn or wicked and unregenerate. With respect to the devout, the use of these commandments is fourfold: (1) They declare in what perfection man was created, for the Law is a mirror of the divine image after which man was once created. (2) People grasp from them the fatherly care of God for the salvation of mankind. (3) They learn to deplore the corruption of their nature more deeply. (4) They know more clearly what should be sought from God.

With respect to the wicked, there is indeed some use for these commands and threats, because they are terrified by them as by thunderbolts and are turned toward conversion, while the admonishing, correcting, and exhorting Word is the medium or instrument through which the Holy Spirit wants to act or through which they are rendered without excuse (John 15:22).

Testimonies which promise something under a condition.

§ 73. The second class contains “those testimonies of the Scriptures in which something is promised to us by God under the condition that we be willing. Isa. 1:19: ‘If you are willing, you will eat the good of the land.’ Amos 5:14: ‘Seek good and you shall live.’ Matt. 19:17: ‘If you would enter life, keep the Commandments.’ If it is within our power to accomplish the offered condition, then there must surely be free choice. If it is not in our power, this is an obvious mockery.”¹⁴

We respond. (1) Augustine (De grat. et lib. arbit., ch. 16) responds in this way:

He himself who said, “If you are willing, you will keep My commandments” [Ecclus. 15:15], a little later says in the same book of Ecclesiasticus: “Who will place a guard over my mouth and a seal upon my lips, lest by chance I fall away from Him?” etc. [Ecclus. 22:27]. Therefore since what he said is true: “If you are willing, you will keep My commandments,” why does he ask that a guard be placed over his mouth? For the commandment of God and his own will are insufficient, since if he is willing, he will keep the commandments. If we were to say this to him standing here, he would very correctly answer us and say: “From my prayer in which I ask God for these things, understand in what sense I said, ‘If you are willing, you will keep the commandment.’ For it is certain that we do keep the commandments if we are willing, but because the will is prepared by the Lord, from Him it must be sought that we are willing as much as is enough to do them with our willing. It is certain that it is we who will when we will, but it is He who causes us to will the good; and about Him it is said, ‘It is God who works in us to will,’” etc. [Phil. 2:13].

(2) The testimonies in which God promises us something under a condition are not of a single type, for some speak about promises for this life, because God wants to repay the external discipline of even the unregenerate with temporal rewards. But some speak about promises for eternal life, and those promises are either legal or evangelical. The legal promises demand not just an external obedience but rather one that is absolute in every detail; and because this is not within our powers, the promises of the Law are useless to us. For this reason, Christ our Mediator must be sought in the Gospel. In Christ, all the promises of the Gospel are “yes and amen” [2 Cor. 1:20], because the promises of the Gospel are free.

(3) Therefore God does not make a game of our wretchedness, nor does He mock us with His legal promises, but He wants the Law to be our pedagogue unto Christ (Gal. 3:24), because to lead us to a knowledge of our infirmities it is enough that we lose confidence in our own powers and possess our every refuge in Christ, our only Mediator, for “God has done what the Law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending His own Son” (Rom. 8:3), who “is the end of the Law for the righteousness of everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4). Therefore, on the part of God, the promises of the Law are fixed and firm, and there is no irony in them, but they become vain and useless by our own fault.

Bellarmine objects: (1) “On the basis of this divine testimony, either the wicked can gain something by thinking truly of their own lack of worth, and by deriving fear and grief from this, and by humbling themselves before God, or they cannot do this. If they can, they have free choice; and if they cannot, this remedy would be applied in vain.”

We respond. Although the wicked cannot convert themselves of themselves and by their own powers, nevertheless their will can be converted by the Holy Spirit by means of these promises and threats, for they are the efficacious medium and instrument through which the Holy Spirit changes their hearts since He wants the efficacy of His Holy Spirit to be connected with the Word. Therefore when the wicked derive a fear of God, faith, and the knowledge of their own unworthiness from their hearing of such promises, this should not be attributed to the powers of free choice but to the operation of divine grace, which the Word does not just put forth outwardly but also works effectively inwardly.

(2) [Bellarmine again:] “Although the wicked cannot fulfill the condition, yet the devout can.”

We respond. The truly devout are also the regenerate. But now, renewal is connected with regeneration itself, through which man is given new powers to do good. Now, our question is not what man can accomplish with the new powers but what he could accomplish with his own natural powers either before or in conversion. Besides this, the condition concerning the perfect fulfillment of the Law is impossible even for the devout person himself, who is, in fact, still being renewed from day to day and is not yet completely renewed. To the extent that he is not yet renewed, to the same extent is he still under the old flesh. (See Augustine, De pecc. merit. et remiss., bk. 2, ch. 7.) But where there is not yet full and perfect renewal, there also cannot yet be the perfect fulfillment of the Law.

The testimonies which teach that it was due to man that he did not avoid sin.

§ 74. The third class contains those testimonies

which teach that it was due to man that he did not do good and did not avoid sin. Num. 14[:43]: “You will fall by the sword because you did not want to obey the Lord.” Deut. 30[:11]: “The command which I command you is not beyond you.” Isa. 5[:4]: “What more could I have done for My vineyard that I have not done?” Jer. 7[:28]: “This nation has not listened to the voice of its Lord and therefore has been cast away from the Lord.” Jer. 32[:23]: “Because you have hardened your hearts and were unwilling to obey the Lord, all these evil things have happened to you.” Matt. 23[:37]: “How often would I have gathered your children together, and you were unwilling.” Acts 7:[51]: “You have always resisted the Holy Spirit.” If he who sins is capable of not sinning, he has free choice; but if he cannot but sin, God complains in vain about man.¹⁵

We respond. (1) These statements are not of one kind, for some speak about external discipline and moral actions, in which we do concede some freedom to man.

(2) But some speak about the very work of conversion. The following can in no way be concluded from such statements: [that] since man can resist the Holy Spirit and hinder His work of conversion, therefore he also can, of himself, assent to God and cooperate with divine grace. This inference is invalid because of the obvious disparity of kind [disparitas rationis], for we are very prone and inclined to evil, according to the witness of Scripture and experience, but we cannot think anything good of ourselves as coming from ourselves [cf. 2 Cor. 3:5]. Ambrose (De vocat. gent., bk. 2, ch. 9): “Although not willing good does lie in man, yet he does not have the power to will good unless that is given to him. The nature has contracted the former through fault; the nature receives the latter by grace.”

Augustine (Soliloq., ch. 15): “My falling was from me. My rising again was from You.”

Alcuin (In 4. Psalm. poenit.): “I could befoul myself, but I could not cleanse myself unless You, Lord Jesus, make me clean with the aspersion of Your holy blood.”

Therefore, on account of the corruption of his nature, man can resist the Holy Spirit as He works conversion, can drive away the Word of God, and can judge himself to be unworthy of eternal life, but he cannot either precede grace with his own efforts or accept it with his own powers once it has been offered.

(3) Thus from the statements in which the fault for being in this state, not being converted, and not being saved is attributed to man, it ought not be inferred that he could or can cooperate with the Holy Spirit in conversion by his own powers. Rather, what follows is only this: that by drawing a nature corrupted by sin from his first parents and by despising the means of conversion, man makes himself unworthy of the grace of conversion and salvation. Therefore God justly accuses both the powerlessness of our first parents which was attracted to sin and the actual stubbornness of people by which they reject the offered means of conversion and salvation.

Bellarmine objects: (1) “The badness contracted from the first sin of our parents is not fault but punishment.”¹⁶

We respond. With this argument, original sin as a whole is denied. In its own place we showed that corrupt concupiscence (by which the apostle defines original sin) is both punishment and fault [On Original Sin (Commonplace XII), §§ 69–80; On Actual Sins (Commonplace XIII), § 70].

Thus what Bellarmine writes here is clearly Pelagian. He says: “As someone incorrectly makes it a fault for a person who has been blind from birth when he bumps into him while walking, even though the blindness descends to him from original sin, so also sinners are not rightly rebuked when the divine precepts are transgressed, if they were to violate the Lord’s commands without free consent, solely from the corruption of the nature which inheres in us from the sin of the first man.” But we invert the comparison as follows. As in a person who becomes blind because of fornication or drunkenness or other sins the blindness is both fault and punishment, so also the wretched slavery to sin contracted through original sin by the very fault of Adam is both punishment and fault. Augustine (Contra Julian., bk. 5, ch. 3): “Blindness of the heart is the sin by which one does not believe in God, and it is the punishment for sin by which the arrogant heart is punished with worthy punishment, and it is the cause of sin when something is committed by the error of a blind heart.”

(2) [Bellarmine again:] “People who are sinners can hear the rebuke, can be affected by a disgust for sins, and can return to the way; therefore they surely have free choice.”

We respond. The very rebukes are like the hammer of the Law with which the Holy Spirit smashes the hearts of people and begins to work conversion in them. Therefore only this follows: that there exists in mankind a will which the Holy Spirit can change by these means, but not that the will itself can by its own powers use such means salutarily and cooperate with the Holy Spirit.

(3) [Bellarmine again:] “The passage in Deut. 30[:11] speaks not of the faculty of knowing but of observation.”

We respond. This will be discussed in its own place in the question on the fulfillment of the Law [On the Law of God (Commonplace XV); On Good Works (Commonplace XX)].

The testimonies which teach that God investigates the powers of man.

§ 75. The fourth class of Scriptures contains those testimonies “which teach that God does something like stepping back and that He investigates what people do and in what directions their pursuits turn them. Deut. 8[:2]: ‘God has led you through the wilderness to test you and to make known what is in your mind, whether or not you are keeping His commandments.’ Deut. 13[:3]: ‘God is testing you to see whether you love Him with all your heart.’ But in vain would God investigate what people were willing to do, unless they had the power to do or not do that thing.”¹⁷

We respond. (1) Those statements and more which are of the same type speak either about the regenerate or about the unregenerate. If the former, they are foreign to the question, for we are not asking whether the regenerate can love God with all their heart and keep His commandments through the Holy Spirit, but about the unregenerate and what they can accomplish with the natural powers of their free choice. If the latter, through this testing and investigation a power is not revealed, but rather the extreme powerlessness of the natural powers. You see, what can the unregenerate do with their powers when even the regenerate themselves shamefully tumble and fall, being still liable to the old flesh if God should take away even a little bit of His grace? Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 32): “Who will believe a wall if it says that it is producing a ray which it is receiving through a window?” Thomas ([ST,] 2.2., q. 4, art. 4): “God creates faith by grace not only when faith begins to exist again but also as long as faith endures. God is always working the justification of people, just as the sun is always working the illumination of the air.”

(2) In some passages the investigation is not taken to mean the desertion of grace—as if God deserts man with His grace or refuses it to man so that it becomes clear what man can accomplish with his own powers. Rather, it is taken to mean the sending of various calamities with which God allows people to be afflicted that they may be driven to Christ, for just as “the Law is the pedagogue unto Christ” (Gal. 3:24), so those evils which oppress us force us to go to God.

Bellarmine objects: (1) “Free choice is still established by this argument, for if afflicted people can seek God, something they were not doing before, they certainly have free choice of the will.”

We respond. They have a will which the Holy Spirit has freed and renewed, but not one which can will the good by its own natural powers. Afflictions and calamities are like sermons of the Law preached in things [reales conciones legis]; therefore they are the means through which the Holy Spirit wants to begin the work of conversion. They do not prove that man can, of himself, cooperate in his conversion, but that the Holy Spirit does not want to work it without means.

(2) [Bellarmine again:] “If with the aid of grace man can seek and not seek God, he is able to cooperate and not cooperate with grace.”

We respond. Bellarmine takes the “aid of grace” to mean the persuasion, incitement, exhortation, etc., by which the Holy Spirit raises the innate powers of free choice and leads them to act, though the aid must be understood as the regeneration and renewal by which new powers are given to man; and because of these powers, we concede that he can cooperate or not cooperate with divine grace now that he has been renewed.

The testimonies which teach that man can master his desire [appetitus].

§ 76. The fifth class has two testimonies of Scripture: Gen. 4[:7]: “Your desire must be beneath you, and you will master it.” Ecclus. 15[:14–17]: “God created man in the beginning and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added commandments and precepts. If you wish to keep His commandments, they will preserve you. He has placed before you fire and water. Reach out your hand for whichever you wish. Before man are life and death, good and evil. Whichever pleases him will be given to him.”¹⁸

We respond to the first. (1) Chrysostom (on Genesis, homily 18) takes this text not as a reference to sin but as a reference to Abel, so that the meaning is: “His” (your brother Abel’s) “turning will be to you. Why are you so angry with your brother because he loves you and will respect you forever as the firstborn brother?” This interpretation appears to be favored both by the Septuagint version, which translates it πρὸς σὲ ἡ ἀπoστρoφὴ αὐτoῡ καὶ σὺ ἄρχεις αὐτoῡ [“his turning is to you, and you will rule him”], but also by the Hebrew text, which has the masculine suffix: . Still we are not insistent on the explanation of Chrysostom, because is masculine, as is clear from Jer. 5:25; Ps. 103:10; and Eccl. 10:4. Accordingly, the masculine suffix can especially be assigned to “sin,” and the context teaches that it must be assigned to it here. That is why Ambrose (De Cain., bk. 2, ch. 7) and Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 15, ch. 7) reject the explanation of Chrysostom.

(2) Some respond that the Hebrew does not have “the desire for sin is beneath you” but that the meaning is posited without the expressed words. However, what must be understood is not a present but a future verb, as the second part shows, so that the full meaning will be: “The desire for sin will be beneath you, and you will master it.” Yet the Hebrews use futures for imperatives, as is well-known. However, we showed earlier [§ 71] that it cannot be concluded from a commandment that by our own powers we can do all the things which are commanded.

(3) But let us concede that Cain could perform this command. This will take nothing away from our position. The Lord is dissuading Cain from the crime of fratricide. But now, we concede that people can repress an external act and can somehow control an external impulse. The word comes from “extending” and “descending” and means a strong desire which seethes like boiling water. Therefore God commands that it be repressed, that force be applied to it, lest it burst forth into an external act.

(4) If these words are assigned to inner obedience and to the repression of its desires, we say that it cannot be concluded from the command that by his own powers an unregenerate person can do what is commanded. In the preceding verses God had admonished Cain to serious repentance. Had Cain heeded this mandate of God, he certainly could have resisted his desires with the help of the Holy Spirit, even though he could not have accomplished this with his natural powers. Ambrose (De vocat. gent., bk. 2, ch. 13): “Your fault will be called back to you. Do not give sin control over you, but rather you should assume mastery over it.” Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 15, ch. 7):

Indeed, the “turning” conversio] can be understood in reference to man himself, so that he knows that he should attribute the fact that he sins to no one other than to himself. For this is the health-giving medicine of repentance and the proper petition for pardon, so that when He says “its turning under you” we should not hear beneath it “will be” but “must be,” that is, in the mood of one who commands rather than of one who declares. For everyone will master his sin if he does not prefer it to himself by defending it, but subjects it to himself by repentance. Otherwise he will serve it as it masters him, if he supports it when it occurs, etc. “Stop!” that is, “Keep your hand away from crime. Sin must not have dominion in your mortal body. For its turning must be under you” when you do not aid it by relaxing the reins but rein it in by stopping it. “You will master it” so that when it is not permitted to act openly, being under the power of a controlling and benevolent mind, it ceases moving even inwardly.

Luther (on Genesis 4, p. 61): “ ‘Its desire is for you,’ that is, as Paul says, ‘Sin is in your members’ [cf. Rom. 7:5, 23]. Also: ‘The flesh lusts against the spirit’ [Gal. 5:17]. But just because you feel the movement of sin, you will not be condemned. If sin entices you, master it through faith. Do not allow it to master you.”¹⁹

From all this it is clear what answer must be given to Bellarmine, who in this statement especially presses the point that God neither promises nor commands but signifies that sin lies within the power of the sinner; and also that no one commands impossible things unless he be insane or mad.

Ecclesiasticus 15[:18 Vg]: “Before man are good and evil.”

§ 77. We respond to the latter statement from Ecclesiasticus: (1) The book is outside the canon. (2) The son of Sirach is speaking about the state of man before the fall, that is, as he was created by God, equipped with perfect powers for good. But from this it cannot be concluded that his state is still like that today. Indeed, God did create man as upright, but Bellarmine has mixed up many questions: in Eccl. 7:30 the word is the same as is used is used in Gen. 6:5 and 8:12 to refer to the corruption of the human nature introduced by sin.²⁰ Therefore from the fact that in Gen. 1:27 man is said to have been created in the image of God, it cannot be concluded that he is still a partaker of that image since “Adam begot a son in his own image” (Gen. 5:3), which had been miserably corrupted and defiled by sin. So also from the fact that in Gen. 1:31 God is said to have created all things to be “very good,” it cannot be concluded that man is still very good in his substance and accidents, since after the fall “God saw that there was great wickedness upon the earth” (Gen. 6:5). So also from the fact that, as far as good and evil are concerned, man is said to have been left in the hand of his own counsel [Ecclus. 15:14], it cannot be concluded that he is still equipped with those perfect powers for good because, when he commits sin, he becomes a slave of sin in such a way that “we are not sufficient of ourselves to claim anything good as coming from us” (2 Cor. 3:5).

(3) Hence Augustine writes (Hypognost., bk. 3): “What does ‘He left him’” (Adam) “‘in the hand of his own counsel’ mean, except that He left him in the power of his free choice, for ‘in the hand’ means a possibility. This is the primary grace by which man could have stood firm if he had wanted to keep the commandments of God. Therefore, deprived of this through his disobedience, man became a captive of the serpent by just judgment, that is, a captive of the devil whom he wanted to obey rather than God. Therefore it is written: ‘For of whom a man is overcome, to the same is he brought into slavery’ [2 Pet. 2:19].”

Bellarmine objects: (1) “Augustine (De grat. et lib. arbit., ch. 2) cites this very passage to prove free choice.”

We respond. Augustine understands free choice to mean the will of man itself, which is free of coercion though it is not free from the slavery of sin.

(2) [Bellarmine again:] “The passage from Ecclesiasticus shows that free choice survived in man even after the fall, for Sirach had said a little earlier: ‘Do not say: It was God who led me astray’ [Ecclus. 15:12]; that is, do not assign the cause for your crime to God. Then he quickly adds: ‘Because God left man in the hand of his own counsel’ [v. 14]. This argument would do nothing if Sirach did not want to signify that the free choice given to the first man at the beginning now remains even in his descendants.”

We respond. In committing external crimes, man indeed has some freedom, but by his own powers he cannot discard the corruption of his nature born in us nor leave the slavery of sin. Nevertheless it is correctly said to him that he should not assign the cause of his sin to God, who originally equipped him with perfect powers for good. And the wretched servitude of sin to which we are subject after the fall must not be assigned to a bloodthirsty decree of God by which Adam was driven to his fall and his posterity hurled headlong into the pit of sin, but rather it must be borne as something received from Adam’s own fault, because he himself fell away from God by his own will, though God created him upright and perfect.

(3) [Bellarmine again:] “With those words, the Ecclesiastic²¹ is addressing people who now exist.”

We respond. Unregenerate people do have certain freedom in external actions which are morally good, and the regenerate have a still far greater freedom. Therefore such admonitions are beneficial to both. Augustine (De grat. et lib. arbitr., ch. 16):

There is always a free will in us, but it is not always good. For either it is free from righteousness when it serves sin, and then it is evil; or it is free from sin when it serves righteousness, and then it is good. But the grace of God is always good, and through it, it happens that the good will itself which has already begun to exist is increased, and then becomes so great that it is able to fulfill the divine commandments which it wills when it wills very much and perfectly. For what is written in Ecclus. 15[:15] strengthens this: “If you are willing, you will keep the commandments,” so that the person who wishes to keep them but cannot may know that he does not yet will fully and may pray to have as much of a will as is sufficient to fulfill the commandments, etc.

Chapter 16:

He himself who said, “If you are willing, you will keep the commandments,” said a little later in the same book of Ecclesiasticus [22:27]: “Who will set a guard over my mouth?” etc. From this prayer understand how he said, “If you are willing, you will keep the commandments.” For it is certain that it is we who keep the commandments if we wish, but because the will is prepared by the Lord, a will great enough for us to do according to our willing must be asked of Him. It is certain that it is we who will when we will, but it is He who causes us to will, about whom it is said, “The will is prepared by the Lord” [Prov. 8:35 LXX], etc.

(4) [Bellarmine again:] “Unless free choice is conceded to man, the ill will of the flesh cannot be compelled, lest it transfer the cause of fault to God.”

We respond. Quite the contrary, people are born under the yoke of sin which was brought into the world by the will of the first parent and by the deceit of the devil, and which passes on to all people. Augustine (Hypogn., bk. 3): “Out of his depraved nature—that is, from the first humans, of whom we ourselves are by nature and in whom there is a depraved freedom—there can come no man of a sound will, namely, with perfect choice of the will which would suffice for him.” Furthermore, God has prepared a remedy for this ailment in our nature in the ministry of the Word. Because many despise and reject that Word, they are not accusing God, the Creator of a perfect nature, and the Healer and Restorer of the ruined nature, but rather themselves.

Deuteronomy 30[:15]: “I have set before you good and evil.”

§ 78. The sixth class sets forth some other statements of Scripture. (I) Deut. 30[:15]: “Consider that today I have set in your sight life and goodness and, on the contrary, death and evil.” And later, v. 19: “I call heaven and earth to witness that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life.” [Bellarmine says:] “Here Moses is not speaking about the state of innocence, but [he speaks] to the Hebrews who were with him at that time, to whom he is leaving the free choice of good or evil.”

We respond. With the greatest solemnity Moses protests that, in teaching the things which pertain to the temporal and eternal salvation of the Israelites, he dissimulated not at all, but showed the way to keep God’s Commandments, the way which leads to life; and that he had seriously warned them to beware of the way of transgressing God’s Commandments, the way which leads to death. But it neither can nor ought to be concluded from this that man can keep the whole Law, much less that he could do it by his own powers of free choice, for “the commandment given us for life” on account of the corruption of our nature “is found to produce death” (Rom. 7:10). “What was impossible for the Law because it was weakened by the flesh God has done by sending His own Son” (Rom. 8:3). Thus, in the keeping of the Commandments, the hope of life lies no longer in ourselves but in Christ, who “is the end of the Law for the righteousness of everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4). According to the apostolic interpretation in that same tenth chapter, Moses describes both the legal righteousness of works and the evangelical righteousness of faith in this place, for Moses set before the Israelites not only the Law but also the prophecies about Christ, both in clear promises and in the types of the sacrifices. He says that life is set before them in this doctrine of his, obviously in this order and manner: from the teaching of the Law comes the knowledge of sin, thus the Law is the pedagogue unto Christ [Gal. 3:24], and whoever believes in Him is regenerated and justified. (This regeneration and justification Moses calls “blessing.”) Renewal is conjoined to this regeneration, through which renewal our “heart is circumcised,” as Moses says in [Deut. 30:]6, so that we can be obedient to the divine Law. But because we receive only the firstfruits of the Spirit, and because in this life renewal is not perfect in every detail, the fulfillment is imperfect, and so not even the reborn themselves should hope for salvation from the righteousness of the Law, much less the unregenerate.

[Joshua 24:15: “The option is given to you.”]

(II) [Bellarmine again:] “Josh. 24[:15 Vg]: ‘The option is given to you, whom you would rather serve.’ There it is left free to the people whether they want to worship the true God or idols, that is, to do good or to sin.”

We respond. The worship of God is either interior or exterior. The unregenerate can by their own powers neither show nor begin the inner and true worship of God, but those to whom the will of God has been revealed in the Word can in some way provide the outward worship. In this passage, Joshua deals with Israelites who already have been converted and taken into the covenant of God through circumcision, and thus he is not giving the option as if they had complete freedom of choice but in order to elicit from them a public confession of the true God and a voluntary obligation to worship Him, and in order that in this way the devout may be strengthened in their religion but the hypocrites may be left without excuse if they persevere in their hypocrisy or later fall openly out of this religion.

Ecclesiasticus 31[:10]: “Who was able to transgress and did not transgress?”

(III) [Bellarmine again:] “Ecclus. 31[:10–11]: ‘Who was able to transgress and did not transgress, and to do evil and did not do it? His good things will be established.’ Here a man is said to be good and worthy of praise and reward because he was able to do evil and did not do it.”

We respond. The discussion in this place does not concern the saving conversion to God nor the capability of applying oneself to good and evil, but to the external uses of wealth. For many people wealth is the instrument and strength for sinning, which even the unregenerate can use honorably and rightly, as the words and examples of the more upright heathen bear witness. But from this passage the powers of free choice in spiritual matters cannot be proved.

1 Corinthians 7[:37]: “Whoever is firmly established in his heart to keep her as a virgin.”

(IV) 1 Cor. 7[:37]: “Whoever is firmly established in his heart to keep her as a virgin does well.”

We respond. Coelestius also used this argument, but Augustine (De perfect. justit.) responds: “As if it should be considered of great importance to be willing to marry when the argument concerns the aid of divine mercy.” To marry off or not marry off one’s virgin [dependent] is related to external actions in which free choice does still have some powers.

2 Corinthians 9[:7]: “As each has determined in his heart.”

(V) [Bellarmine again:] “2 Cor. 9[:7]: ‘As each has determined in his heart, not from sadness or by necessity.’ Here a choice is given to man.”

We respond. But who would deprive man of a choice of will in external actions such as making contributions? Furthermore, the apostle here is discussing the reborn.

The statements of the fathers.

§ 79. As far as the statements of the fathers are concerned, it is not our plan to discuss them individually.

We respond in general. (1) Before the Pelagian controversy began, they spoke more freely, for the discussion was with the Marcionites and Manichaeans, who imagined that sin is an evil substance created thus by an evil principle, and even that sin did not enter into the world through the free choice of the first parent nor that the choice is free in evil actions (Augustine, Contra Julian., bk. 1, ch. 21).

(2) They quite often use the expression “free choice” to mean man’s will, so that for man to be of free choice is nothing else to them but that man has been equipped with the faculty of understanding and willing.

(3) They very often use the word “freedom” to mean the inner freedom which is free from the necessity of compulsion, such that the will of man does whatever it does willingly, freely, and compelled by no one.

(4) In some statements they speak about freedom in external actions, namely, that a person who is not yet reborn can somehow show an external discipline and restrain his external members from the more serious sins. In this respect they call free choice depraved, bent, wounded, etc.

(5) They sometimes use the expression “free choice” to mean that the mind and will can be converted by the ordinary dispensation of God, which capacity for conversion is in neither brute animals nor even devils. Augustine (Letter 107 ad Vitalem): “If we really wish to defend free choice, we should not attack the source from which it is free.” Luther (Oper. Lat., vol. 1, f. 236): “When the fathers defend free choice, they are speaking about the capacity of its freedom, namely, that it can be turned to God through grace and become the truly free thing which it was created to be.”²²

(6) When they consider the corruption of [human] nature introduced through sin, by which the will of man is in service to sin and of itself cannot help but serve it, they say clearly that free choice has been lost, wiped out, ruined, made a slave, etc. They call the will a damnable handmaid, a captive, stubbornness, not freedom.

(7) Because the world disgracefully abuses the doctrine of the powerlessness of human powers in spiritual matters to feed sloth, security, and stubbornness, at times the ancients spoke too gloriously about human powers, especially in homilies to the people, which Jerome confesses about himself. Bellarmine (De grat. et lib. arb., bk. 6, ch. 6):

Chrysostom does not preach prevenient grace very openly, because at that time those had not yet risen up who would deny it. Therefore he attributes to us the dealings we have with God. He sometimes says that we are not anticipated by God in the manner of one determining [us] for one thing [only] [per modum determinantis ad unum] and who brings a necessity so that freedom of choice is removed. This is something which Chrysostom repeats often and freely both because of the Manichaeans who denied free choice and to shatter the indolence and neglect of people, so that they do not think that God was going to anticipate them so as to leave them nothing which they had to do.

(8) At times they not only speak too freely but also quite unfortunately, which they later correct in other writings. This is admitted by the Papist authors themselves. Toletus (commentary on John 6): “In this, Chrysostom, Cyril, and other Greek teachers are not approved.”

Maldonatus (commentary on John 6): “Even Theophylact, Euthymius, and Arnobius speak in such a way as if man can merit grace before he is drawn to grace by grace. But this doctrine of theirs has too close a kinship with the heresy of the Pelagians.”

Sixtus Senensis ([Bibliothec.,] in the preface to bk. 5): “By the force of speaking with the Manichaeans, who were defending the necessity of fate, Chrysostom gave more than is right to natural powers.”

Pererius (commentary on Romans, no. 3): “The teaching of Theodoret, Oecumenius, and Jerome seems to be contrary to the points which the apostle argues in this passage. The opinion of Augustine fits the teaching of Paul more closely. For this reason, Augustine has retracted his intemperately stated opinions and in those [retractions] has tacitly noted the statements of others which have been given incorrectly.” [Augustine] (Retract., bk. 1, ch. 9): “In regard to our will, it is established that we either enjoy or lack the true good. Whoever wants to live uprightly will achieve such a great thing with such ease that to will it is nothing else but to have what he has willed.” He responds: “Against the Manichaeans we stated that the will is that by which one sins and lives correctly, but unless it is freed by grace, it cannot live uprightly.” Retract. (bk. 1, ch. 15): “We are commanded by righteousness and have the power by nature to love spiritual things.” He responds: “Grace accomplishes this: that the healed nature can do what it could not do when it was corrupted, through Him who came to seek and to save that which had been lost [Luke 19:10].” Retract. (bk. 1, ch. 22): “Changing the will for the better has been placed within our power.” He responds: “It is in man’s power. But that power is nothing unless given by God.” Retract. (bk. 1, ch. 26): “God does not have mercy unless our will has preceded it.” He responds: “This is said after repentance, for there is also a mercy which anticipates the will. If it were not to exist, the will would not be prepared by the Lord [cf. Prov. 8:35 LXX].” More statements of this kind are extant in [Augustine’s] books Contra Julianum, Contra Coelestium, De natura et gratia, etc. Julian had quoted the opinion of Basil: “Sin is not a substance but an accident; therefore it can be separated from the will very easily.” Augustine responds: “It is easy not for the human will but for divine mercy. This is enough against the Manichaeans, who think it is impossible.” Jerome had said: “God gave man free choice. He gave him freedom of his own mind that each man might live not according to the rule of God but according to his own obedience, not out of necessity but out of will, that virtue might have a place,” etc. Augustine responds that Jerome “is speaking about freedom before the fall, the freedom in which Adam had been created. Clement of Alexandria, Epiphanius, and others write that people in ancient times were saved by the law of nature.” Augustine clearly rejects this as Pelagian.

SECTION VI: AN EXAMINATION OF BOOK 6 OF BELLARMINE,

ON THE POWERS OF FREE CHOICE IN SPIRITUAL MATTERS

On the inability of its powers in spiritual matters.

§ 80. Bellarmine argues (De grat. et lib. arbit., bk. 6, ch. 2): “Without the special illumination of God, man cannot believe the mysteries of faith.” Chapter 4: “In those matters which pertain to piety and salvation, the human will cannot will without the help of the grace of God.” Chapter 5: “Solely by the powers of nature man can by no means prepare himself to accept grace, not even congruously.” Chapter 7: “One cannot love God without the help of grace.” In his summary of this subject, Bellarmine considers us to be of the same mind with himself in all these statements (though in the elaboration itself there do occur some things which we by no means approve), but he departs from the Scholastics and other Papist writers who obviously Pelagianize in these questions. Yet meanwhile he himself still thinks and speaks too poorly about the efficacy of grace, as is usual [for him], as will become clear from the following.

That the proposed questions may be understood quite correctly, these distinctions must be observed. (1) Nature in some manner knows certain major theoretical concepts of the Christian faith, namely, that God exists, that He is one, that He is the avenger of crimes, etc. And in practical matters [it knows] that external sins are to be avoided, that civil righteousness is to be performed, etc. But other [chief points] are mysteries divinely revealed in the Word, for instance: that there are three persons of the Trinity, that Christ is the Son of God, that the grace of God and righteousness come to us for Christ’s sake, etc. The former can in some way be arrived at by the natural light of reason, from which the natural knowledge of God has its source. Yet it is imperfect, weak, and corrupt. On the other hand, our reason is completely blind and darkened to the latter.

(2) The knowledge of the letter is one thing; the knowledge of the Spirit is another. Hypocrites who mingle with the reborn in the church understand the articles on the Trinity, on the incarnation of the Word, etc. But this knowledge is in such a condition that it consists of the letter rather than of the Spirit. That is, salutary assent and trust are far removed from this knowledge because it has not been graciously sealed through the Holy Spirit, nor does it have the true trust of the heart joined with it.

(3) Some willing of man is pedagogical, that which regards the external hearing of the Word and external pedagogy; performing this has been left even to unregenerate man. But the inner willing and assent are something else; by these the evangelical promises and the grace of God in those promises are received.

Is free choice rightly said to be passive in conversion?

§ 81. Bellarmine (chs. 9ff.) next deals with freedom of choice in the matters which pertain to salvation and sets himself the task of refuting our opinion. (I) He calls it a “crass error that Luther had said that free choice has no activity in a good work when we are speaking about an internal work, that is, that free choice is passive in conversion.”

We respond. Luther did not teach that conversion took place without the deliberation of the mind and the assent of the will, but he denied that the will by its own natural powers actively concurs with those acts. That is, he denied that in the mind and will there survived a “working power” [δύναμις ἐνεργητική] which [the will] brings forth as it is aroused through grace and in this way cooperates with the Holy Spirit. This comparison must not be extended any farther than applies to clay in the hand of the potter. Luther says the same thing that Augustine (De grat. et libero arbitrio, ch. 16) once said, “It is certain that when we will it is we who will, but it is He who causes us to will about whom it is said, ‘It is God who works in us to will’ [Phil. 2:13], etc.” For this reason he does not call that first grace “cooperating” but “operating” grace.

(II) He accuses Chemnitz of “attributing the Pelagian error” to the Papists “in bad faith,” as if “they deny the fact that our will can effect absolutely nothing of spiritual and salutary good without the help of the grace of God.”

We respond. The debates of the Scholastics concerning congruous merit, the preparation for grace, the possibility of loving God above all things out of purely natural powers, etc., are well-known. Chemnitz has explained the insidious ambiguities of the decrees of the Council [of Trent] quite clearly. Bellarmine should have responded to him. Bellarmine is also hiding in a hole of ambiguity since by the “aid of grace” he means not the sort of change and renewal of the will by which people are given new powers to will and consent, but rather he means that the dormant and original powers are roused.

(III) To us [Bellarmine] attributes the opinion that “our will is so acted upon by God in good works of piety that it cannot but act, and though the will itself also actively concurs, because it is the very thing which produces action, nevertheless it concurs as a merely natural instrument of God and not as a free cause and master of its own action.” And in this sense [Bellarmine] says that we deny that “our will cooperates with God or is aided by God.”

We respond. In a few words he attributes to us many things which are by no means acknowledged by us, but he needed to cover up the state of the controversy so cunningly, lest the open truth shine forth with its rays. First, none of us says that in good works of piety the will is so acted upon by God that it cannot but act, for the term “works of piety” means either conversion itself or the works of the devout done after renewal. In neither case should it be said that the will is so acted upon by God that it cannot but act. For the will of man can resist the Holy Spirit and hinder the work of conversion, for God acts in conversion not with absolute but with ordinary power.²³ The reborn can commit sins against conscience and in turn fall away from God, for they have not been elected by an absolute decree of God. Therefore in conversion the will of man is so acted upon by God that it can act and not act; that is, when the Holy Spirit approaches the work of conversion, the stubbornly resisting human will can hinder it and, alas, often does hinder it. For the Holy Spirit does not bring a coercive force upon people who are to be converted (we are speaking about the ordinary manner) but makes willing people out of unwilling ones; that is, to those who are by nature unwilling and are unable to do anything except not will He gives the capability to be able to will and to will truly through grace. Those who are stubbornly unwilling—that is, those who resist the operation of the Holy Spirit with actual stubbornness—He does not convert ordinarily. For here there must be a precise distinction between privative unwillingness and positive unwillingness. In fact, there are certain grades of this positive unwillingness.

But if it is said that the will of man in good works is so acted upon by God that it itself does not and cannot act, here again the ambiguities must be removed. For if this is meant in such a way that in and after conversion there are no movements in the will, the proposition is false, nor is it acknowledged by us, because no conversion occurs and no good works are done without actions of the mind and will. But if it is meant in such a way that the will of man is so acted upon by God that it does not itself act and cannot act by its own natural powers (yet it could act and truly does act with the new powers given to it by God), the proposition is true, and it is firmly held by us.

Second, we do not acknowledge what Bellarmine attributes to us: that the will concurs as a merely natural instrument of God, not as the free cause and master of its own act. For the will does concur with the first beginning of conversion not as a cooperating instrument but as the subject in which the Holy Spirit acts not by compulsion nor natural pressing but by liberation, illumination, renewal. But afterward the will is endowed with new powers and concurs as (not the natural but) the free instrument, since the Spirit can and often is expelled from the reborn, acting freely, through sins against conscience. Therefore in this respect and in this state the will is the instrument in and with which the Holy Spirit acts because, as Augustine says (De corr. et grat., ch. 2), “the reborn are acted upon by the Holy Spirit in such a way that they do what must be done, not as if they themselves do nothing.”

Third, the reason why we say that the will does not cooperate with grace but is in need of the help of divine grace is by no means because it concurs as a natural instrument and not as a free cause. Rather this is what we believe, what we strive to approve in every way: in conversion the will does not act by its own powers that still remain from its first birth but is in need of the gift of new powers. Therefore this is the sense and respect in which we deny that the will cooperates with grace; yet we by no means deny that it becomes a co-worker [σύνεργoν] after renewal has taken place.

The arguments in favor of free choice in spiritual matters. First, people are said to be co-workers of God.

§ 82. Now that these points have been observed accurately, it becomes quite obvious what response must be given to the arguments of Bellarmine. In the first place, he brings up the scriptural testimonies in which “people are said to be workers, builders, planters, waterers, and co-workers of God in good works” [cf. Rom. 15:20; 1 Cor. 3:6–7, 9–10; 2 Cor. 13:10], but it is clear that those statements are discussing the devout and the reborn who, we concede, do cooperate [συνεργεῖν] in good works.

Second, conversion itself is required of people.

The second class contains the scriptural statements which require conversion itself of people. Zech. 1:3: “Turn [Convertimini] to Me, and I shall turn to you.” Joel 2:12: “Turn to Me with all your heart.” Jer.[4:]1: “Return to Me.” Ezek. 18:31: “Make yourselves a new heart.” Col. 3:9: “Put off the old man.”

We respond. The Pelagians will be unable to elicit from those statements that man works out his own conversion without grace. In the same way, the Papists cannot and should not elicit from them that man by his own natural powers of free will cooperates with grace in conversion, because such admonitions by no means indicate that man is capable of what is required of him by his own powers. Rather, they are the efficacious instruments of the Holy Spirit by which He wishes to rouse people from the sleep of sins and to convert them so that what they cannot do of themselves they can do by His grace and gift. For as in the Gospel account Christ says: “Rise up, girl!” and “Come forth, Lazarus!” [cf. Mark 5:41; John 11:43], and yet no one concludes from this that they could have raised themselves from natural death or cooperated with their resurrection by their own powers, but the whole work is understood as assigned to Christ and His life-giving Word, so also, when the Holy Spirit says, “Repent, be converted, rise up, you who are sleeping!” this does not indicate what man has the power to do but what God, because He does have the power, wants to work in man through these efficacious admonitions, unless His work is stubbornly resisted. This bestowal should please us greatly, because Scripture calls unregenerate people “dead in their sins” (Eph. 2[:1]; Col. 2[:13]); and in John 5[:8–9, 24], when Christ grants physical and spiritual resuscitation, He ascribes both completely to the efficacy of His Word. Therefore it must be acknowledged that we cannot do what the Holy Spirit requires of us except by His grace. Jer. 31:18[–19]: “Convert me, Lord, that I may be converted. When You converted me, I repented.” 2 Tim. 2:25: “God may perhaps grant them penitence.” John 6:29: “This is the work of God, that you believe,” etc.

Furthermore, in some statements, the turning [conversio] of God toward us does not mean the salutary grace of conversion by which He Himself recalls our heart to penitence, but the declaration of divine kindness in presenting benefits, by which He declares that He is kind and propitious in turning away punishments, just as He at times reveals His wrath with public disasters. In Jer. 15:19 the word “conversion” is used as a reference to returning to the pursuit of the prophetic office, for God is promising the prophet that if he does not permit himself to be deterred by His sinister judgments of the people, but energetically carries out the office entrusted to him, then he would in turn be sustained and confirmed by God.

Beyond this, some statements speak clearly about the constant wrestling of the Spirit against the flesh in the reborn by which they restrain the desires [concupiscentias] of the flesh and thus put off the old man. This is something that can by no means be transferred to people who are not yet reborn, who yet do not have the firstfruits of the Spirit.

Finally, if a “sufficient and working power” [ἐπιτηδειότης ac ἐνεργητικὴ δύναμις] of human strength must be concluded from these commands, it will follow that man does not cooperate but fully operates his own conversion before God turns to him with His grace. This is Pelagianism itself.

Third, we are assisted by God in good works.

The third class of Bellarmine’s arguments contains the statements of Scripture which teach that “we are helped by God in good works, for it should not be said that he is properly being helped who does nothing, but he who labors in the doing.” Ps. 26[:9]: “You are my help.”²⁴ Ps. 69[:2]: “O Lord, hasten to help me.”²⁵ Rom. 8[:26]: “The Spirit helps our weakness.” 1 Cor. 15[:10]: “I have labored more than all, but not I but the grace of God with me.”

We respond. In these statements, the reborn and believers are under discussion, those who, because they are still weak because of the inherent old flesh, need the help and confirmation of the Holy Spirit. Augustine (Contra duas epist. Pelag., bk. 2, ch. 10) does not call the first grace of conversion “helping,” but “prevenient” and “operating”: “Subsequent grace indeed helps a good intent, but the intent itself would not exist unless grace preceded it. And the zeal of man which is called good is helped by grace when it begins to exist, but is inspired by Him of whom it is said, ‘It is God who wills in you to will and to do’ [Phil. 2:13].” De corrept. et grat. (ch. 12): “If in such great weakness of this life a renewed will were left to the reborn that it might continue in the help of God if they were willing, and if God were not working in them to will, in the midst of so many and such great temptations the will would succumb because of its own weakness.” From these and a great many similar statements, it is evident that Augustine does not posit helping grace until prevenient grace first works the willing (without the cooperation of the old man), for at that time it helps, lest we will in vain.

The word “helping.”

Moreover, when coming to the statements of the ancients which preach the help of grace, it must be noted and properly explained that when the words “succoring,” “aiding,” “helping,” and similar words are attributed to God, they quite often are expressing the total cause, and they do not divide the praise for the operation between God and people. Thus in the Psalms and in the prophetic writings, God is said to support and help those whom He has plucked from the pit of their miseries, in which all human operation ceases and the might of God alone shows itself. The passage in 1 Cor. 15[:10] also speaks about the converted and reborn Paul, who attributes nothing to himself but all things to divine grace, when he states that what he is, he is by the grace of God. The Greek text properly reads thus: “I have labored more than all, yet not I but the grace of God ἡ σὺν ἐμoί” (of course supply oὖσα), “which was with me,” that is, which is and was that which made me sufficient but which by no means shares its works and the praise for them with me, something which the opposition “not I but the grace of God which is with me” proves very clearly.

Ambrose (commentary [on this passage]): “Lest he be thought to have exalted himself boastfully, he quickly humbles himself when he ascribes this very thing no longer to himself but to the grace of God, in order to bring all the glory back to God.”

Erasmus (Annot.): “Paul is correcting what he had just said, that he had worked more than all. In fact, he says, ‘It is not I who have done this, but rather the grace of God which was with me,’ that we may understand that this entire matter is understood as given to God.”

Fourth, a person who has been called has the power not to come.

In the fourth class, Bellarmine offers the statements which witness that a person whom God has called is able not to come. Prov. 1[:24]: “I called you, and you refused.” Matt. 23[:37]: “I wanted to gather together your children, and you would not.” Acts 7[:51]: “You have resisted the Holy Spirit,” etc.

We respond. We have shown earlier that these things are not of the same kind [§ 74]. The will of man is sufficient by its own powers to resist [grace], but it needs new powers to acquiesce. Ambrose (De vocat. gent., bk. 2, ch. 9): “Not willing good does lie in man, yet he does not have the power to will good unless that is given to him.”

The statements of the fathers concerning free choice in spiritual matters.

§ 83. Earlier [§ 59] we discussed in general the statements of the ancients which Bellarmine cites in ch. 11 and most of those which are gathered here, especially the statements of Augustine which bear witness that to will is an act of our will, which we do not deny. Yet we add from Augustine himself that it is an act of the will not as established under the old [man] but as reborn and in the beginning of renewal through the Holy Spirit. [Augustine] (De pecc. merit., bk. 2, ch. 5): “I do not deny that free choice itself pertains to the grace of God—that is, to the gifts of God—not only that it exists but also that it exists as a good thing, that is, that it is converted to do the commandments of God.” De grat. et liber. arbitr. (ch. 16): “It is certain that it is we who will when we will, but it is He who works it that we will and do by providing the will with very effectual powers, of whom it is written: ‘It is God who works in us both to will and to do’ [Phil. 2:13].” De praedest. sanct. (ch. 7): “Our willing and believing must be understood such that both are of God who prepares the will, and both are ours, because that does not happen unless we are willing.”

Bernard (De grat. et lib. arbitr.): “This is the entire work of free choice: that it consents, but not that such consent comes from choice itself since ‘we are not sufficient to think,’ which is less than to consent, ‘anything of ourselves as from ourselves’ [2 Cor. 3:5].”

Bellarmine objects that he also “acknowledges the aid of prevenient grace,” but we have shown earlier what he means by that expression and how insidiously he deceives [§ 68]. As for the arguments which he gives in ch. 12, we dealt with them a little earlier [§§ 56–57]. Thus it remains for us to explain the rest of the statements of Scripture which the other supporters and defenders of free choice besides Bellarmine use, so that the true and genuine meaning of those statements may shine forth.

The remaining statements of Scripture in favor of free will: First, Psalm 119[:112]: “I have inclined my heart to observe Your precepts.”

§ 84. “Ps. 119:112: ‘I have inclined my heart to observe Your precepts.’ Therefore it is within the power of man to turn his heart in either direction.”

We respond. There is more in the conclusion than the antecedent allows. For if David inclined his heart to observe the precepts of the Lord, it does not follow that he did this by the powers of his free choice. But he did this as he was renewed by the Holy Spirit, because in the same psalm he acknowledges that that inclining is the work of the Holy Spirit when he prays in v. 33 [and v. 36]: “Teach me, Jehovah, the way of Your statutes, and incline my heart to Your testimonies.” Therefore David is teaching not what he did by his own powers but how he did what he had done by the grace of the Holy Spirit, namely, with a spontaneous and ready mind, and not with servile and forced obedience, for the obedience ought to be spontaneous, proceeding from the heart (Ps. 110:3).

Ambrose (De fuga seculi, ch. 1) and, on the basis of him, Augustine (De bono perseverant., ch. 8): “The prophet testifies that this” (the flight from wickedness) “is a matter of the promise rather than of the performance by saying, ‘Incline my heart to Your testimonies and not to avarice’ [Ps. 119:36], for our heart and thoughts are not within our power,” etc. “God gives the human heart pious thoughts by which to have faith.”

Hosea 5[:15]: “I shall return to My place.”

§ 85. “Hosea 5:15: ‘I shall return to My place until they put [their guilt] in their heart and seek My face.’ Therefore the will of man can turn to God by its own powers.”

We respond. To go to His place does not mean that God is going to take away His grace and wait for people to turn to Him by their own powers but that He would hide His face through the cross and press them with the weight of calamities so that they would come to a knowledge of their sins. That is why this is added: “When afflictions happen to them, they will hurry to Me” [Hosea 5:15]. Isa. 26:16: “In distress they sought You. They poured out a prayer when Your chastening was upon them.” Disasters are like sermons of the Law preached in things [reales quasi conciones legis], by whose preaching the Holy Spirit wants to be effectual in the hearts of people for the knowledge and hatred of their sins. You see, afflictions of and through themselves do not work repentance, unless the Holy Spirit affects hearts inwardly and changes them, since the wicked often become worse through calamities. Furthermore, the words have been incorrectly translated “until they put in their heart,” even though the root is Thus Munsterus translated it “until their snorting takes place,” that is, until they become abominable with snorting because of their punishment. Pagninus renders it “until they fail”; the Targum, “until they acknowledge that they have sinned,” and thus they deservedly endure the severity of the utterly fair Judge.

Matthew 12[:33]: “Either make the tree good.”

§ 86. “Matt. 12:33: ‘Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.’ Therefore people have the free choice to turn or not turn to God.”

We respond. For many things, it is said that they are being made when what is being proved is that they have already been made. So also in this passage not the doing but the declaration of a good or bad tree is meant, because it adds “a tree is known by its fruit.” It would also be very absurd for Christ to command people to make themselves bad. The Pharisees used to cover the inner sins of their hearts—such as pride, envy, hatred, ambition, etc.—with the hypocritical veil of exterior sanctity, and so Christ commands them to take off their deceitful mask and pretended persona so that people may be able to recognize them to be outwardly the sort of people they are inwardly, that there may be a harmony of lips, works, and heart. But Christ by no means attributes to the Pharisees the capability to be able to turn to God and “make their trees good” by their own powers. Rather, He clearly adds: “How can you speak good when you are evil?” [v. 34]. Others refer it to Christ Himself: “Either acknowledge Me to be good and to do good, or acknowledge Me to be evil and to do evil.” But the first interpretation of the text is more fitting.

Mark 9[:24]: “Lord, I believe, but help my weakness.”

§ 87. “Mark 9:24: ‘Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief.’ Therefore we begin conversion with our own powers.”

We respond. It will have to be proved that the holy thought, good intent, and first spark of faith existed because of our own powers of nature and not because of the working of the Holy Spirit, which this passage certainly does not assert. God helps a weak faith; this is helping grace. Yet not even a tiny spark of faith exists which He does not kindle; this is operating and preparing grace. 1 Cor. 12:3: “No one can say” (with a truly faithful heart) “that Christ is Lord except through the Holy Spirit.” But here the father of the lunatic calls Christ “Lord” by faith, though a weak faith, and therefore this is surely from the gift of the Holy Spirit. He had heard about Jesus of Nazareth, that He would cure ailments and free the possessed by His divine power, and from this hearing he conceived the first spark of faith through the working of the Holy Spirit. By it he came to Christ, who helped the weakness of his faith.

Luke 8[:18]: “Take heed how you hear.”

§ 88. “Luke 8:18: ‘Take heed how you hear.’ Therefore it is within our powers to be able to hear with a certain assent.”

We respond. The word “how” embraces certain things which have been placed within the choice and powers of the unregenerate, especially those things which are declared negatively, for instance, that the Word should not be heard with a desire for contradicting nor with a zeal for calumny nor with the intent to blaspheme it. But there are some things which the human will cannot accomplish except through the working of the Holy Spirit, especially those things which are asserted positively, as, for instance, to hear with the assent of the heart and the obedience of the will. The former they call “exterior hearing”; the latter, “internal hearing.” Hence with this statement of Christ spoken indiscriminately to His audience—some of whom, like the apostles, had already been reborn, but others of whom who had not been reborn—He admonishes the reborn to stir up the gift of God which is in them [cf. 2 Tim. 1:6], because even the reborn, due to the inherent weakness of the flesh, need such incitements by which to be aroused to greater care, lest the faith kindled by the Holy Spirit gradually be extinguished again in their hearts. [With the same words,] He urges the unregenerate to turn away from their interest in contradicting, calumniating, and blaspheming. Augustine’s book De correptione et grat. belongs here. In it he shows that the corrections and admonitions are the salutary instruments through which the Holy Spirit wants to be effectual in the hearts of people. He also writes (De bono persev., ch. 14): “When the Lord was speaking to those who had their carnal ears open, He yet kept saying, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear’ [Luke 8:8]. He knew beyond doubt that not all had such ears. But the Lord Himself shows from whom those who have them do have them when He says, ‘I shall give them a heart to know Me and ears to hear’ [cf. Jer. 24:7]. Having ears to hear, then, is the gift of obedience.”

Luke 10[:30]: “The traveler was left half dead.”

§ 89. “Luke 10:30: ‘A traveler was wounded by robbers and was left half dead.’ The traveler is a type of the human race, wounded and stripped by the devil. That the man was left half dead” (says the Jesuit Salmeron in his commentary on this parable, treatise 16) “means that free will has not been destroyed.”

We respond. (1) Allegories do not provide conclusive arguments unless the explanation is drawn from Scripture itself or at least is proven to agree with Scripture.

(2) In this passage the proper and principal intent of Christ is not to speak about the state of man after the fall and his restoration but about man’s neighbor and the responsibilities of love that he owes him. Thus not all parts of this parable should be explained so laboriously and subtly. Rather, it is enough to hold to the principal aim; we have said more about this in the treatise On the Interpretation of Scripture [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 2, §§ 136–40].

(3) If we wished to refer the fact that he was left half dead to fallen man, it should be taken not as a reference to spiritual life—and thus to conversion, faith, and the obedience which pleases God—but as a reference to natural life and external discipline, for as far as spiritual life and the powers necessary to begin it are concerned, Scripture pronounces him not half dead but completely dead (John 5:25; Eph. 2:5).

Macarius (Homily 30) compares the half-dead traveler with “Lazarus rotting in the grave on the fourth day.”

Lyra says: “The life of grace has been taken away, and the natural life remains.”

Maldonatus (commentary): “The fact that he is said to have been left half dead means nothing else but that he was left in a very wretched state, for he was left in such a way that he was half dead. This is more miserable than if he had been left dead, because he felt his misery more.”

We know that the author of the Hypognost. (bk. 3) relates this passage to free choice. He says: “He is correctly said to have been left half dead, for he had vital movement; that is, his free choice was wounded, because it alone was insufficient to return him to eternal life, which he had lost. Thus he is said to be half dead.” But here the word “choice” means the will itself; we freely concede that man was not stripped of this through the fall. But if the freedom of uprightness is understood, the same author writes about this a bit later: “What else is shown in the sheep lost out of the hundred sheep except that free choice had wandered away from the fellowship of the righteous now that the good of its potential had been lost by the fault of the first parent and could not return by itself to its cohort, that is, to the paradise which it left, to be reassociated with the number of the faithful,” etc. The Lord proves this when He says that the man who had been wounded by robbers was taken to an inn not under his own power but carried on a beast.

Luke 11[:13]: “The heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.”

§ 90. “Luke 11:13: ‘The heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.’ Therefore we can call upon God without the grace of the Holy Spirit.”

We respond. Christ is not speaking about the first spark of faith and of the Spirit, as if we could anticipate this with our prayers which proceed from the natural powers of our free choice and which have been poured out without the grace of the Holy Spirit. Rather, He is speaking of the increase of the Holy Spirit, who has already been received, and about the growth of His gifts. For as far as the first spark of faith and the salutary invocation of God are concerned, the apostle testifies clearly: “No one can say ‘Lord Jesus’ except through the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). Therefore how would we be able to pray without the Holy Spirit, who is “the Spirit of grace and of prayer” (Zech. 12:10), who “teaches us to pray” (John 4:23)? Therefore Christ is speaking not about prevenient grace but about subsequent, not about operating grace but about the cooperating grace of the Spirit, which the context also shows, since Christ is speaking to the apostles who had already been renewed by the Holy Spirit. And He uses an example from the disposition of an earthly father toward his children who are asking him for something, and shows that when the disciples ask the heavenly Father for the gifts of the Holy Spirit they will be heard, because they are not strangers but the very beloved children of God. “But,” you ask, “why does Christ use this form of speaking?” He wanted to teach us not to wait for violent and perceptible movements to be able to make a claim from these about the presence and grace of the Holy Spirit, even if we were resisting the Word and indulging our corrupt inclinations. Rather, when we have the desire, even if it barely shows itself with a hidden sigh, we may be sure that the Holy Spirit is present and at work. He also wanted to strengthen our weakness, lest we fall, even if the beginnings may be insignificant and obscure; rather, we should ask that they be increased. All of this is better understood from practice than from bare disputations.

Fulgentius (Letter 6 ad Theod.): “Indeed, the aid of grace must always be sought by us from God, but let us not attribute the very thing which we ask to our own powers, for one cannot have even this disposition to pray unless God gives it. Therefore that we desire the help of grace is itself of grace, for by it one begins to pray for it.”

Augustine (Contra Julian., bk. 4, ch. 8): “Here you” (Pelagians) “have begun to place the merits which precede grace—that is, in the asking, seeking, and knocking—as I see, in order that the debt may be paid by these merits, as if grace were so called in vain, as if no grace preceded and touched the heart in order that a beatific good be asked of God, in order that God be sought, in order that one knock on God’s door and that it would thus be written in vain: ‘His mercy will go ahead of me’ [Ps. 59:10; 58:11 Vg].” These are the words of Augustine.

“Faith pours out a prayer, and the prayer poured out of faith gains firmness.” There is no prayer pleasing to God without faith. But now, faith is the work and gift of God.

Luke 15[:18]: “I shall rise up and go to my father.”

§ 91. “In Luke 15:18, the prodigal says in his heart: ‘I shall arise and go to my father.’ Therefore the beginning of conversion comes from us.”

We respond. Augustine (Letter 106 ad Paul.) writes: “He who thought he could keep what God had given him without the help of God went off to a distant region, lived wastefully, and spent everything. Worn out by the misery of a harsh servitude, he came to himself and said, ‘I shall rise up and go to my father.’ How could he have had a good thought unless the most merciful Father had breathed it into him in secret?” Quaest. evangel. (bk. 2, ch. 33): “How could he in whom there was so great an obliviousness toward God know this except because the recognition of him who comes to his senses is there just when the Gospel is preached? It is He who works the very willing of whom it is written: ‘It is God who works to will’ [Phil. 2:13]. He inspired this good thinking in him who was unable to think anything good of himself as from himself [cf. 2 Cor. 3:5].”

John 1[:12]: “He gave power to become the children of God.”

§ 92. “John 1:12: ‘To all who received Him, who believed on His name, He gave power to become children of God.’ Therefore, before we are the children of God, we have the power and ability to become such children.”

We respond. To receive Christ is to believe in Christ; but “no one can believe in Christ, except this be given him by God” (Phil. 1:29), which John himself teaches when he adds: “who were born not of blood nor of the will of man but of God” [John 1:13]. Here he is contrasting the regeneration from God to birth from flesh and blood, showing that it is a heavenly gift of God that they receive Christ by faith, who otherwise would remain forever in the darkness of their unbelief. For in preceding verses he honors people not yet reborn with this title in order to crush the arrogance of our own powers. In fact, he carefully says that this “power” has been “given” to those who believe. Therefore surely it is not born from their own powers. Indeed, because faith and the adoption of sons are very intimately and immediately connected, the saying of the evangelist that the faithful are given this power ought not be drawn to the point of saying that those who truly believe in Christ are not yet the children of God but will become so later. Gal. 3:26: “You are all the children of God through faith.” John [3]:36: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” In this statement at least this much is meant: that even though faith and the adoption of sons are simultaneous in time, they stand in order to each other as prior and posterior. For faith in Christ—or, rather, Christ apprehended by faith—is the cause of this adoption of sons, and, in turn, the latter is something like the effect of the former. In using this manner of speaking, the evangelist is looking at this order. He is looking especially not only at the inchoate benefit of adoption in this life but also the future benefit, namely, the glorious revelation of the children of God on the Last Day conjoined with their full (so to speak) participation in the heavenly inheritance. 1 John 3:2: “Little children, we are God’s sons now, but it does not yet appear what we are going to be,” etc.

Augustine (Contra duas epist. Pelag., bk. 1, ch. 3): “The power for those who believe in Him to become the children of God is given when this very thing is given: that they believe in Him. Unless this power is given by God, there can be no power of free choice, because it will not be free in the good because the Liberator has not freed it.” De consensu evangelist. (bk. 2, ch. 3): “He said that those born of God became the children of God, which means the adoption, when the power was received. And in order to show more clearly by what grace this occurred, he also said that ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ [John 1:14], as if he were to say, ‘What is so strange about their becoming the children of God, though they were flesh, since the Only-Begotten became flesh for their sakes, even though He was the Word?’”

John 6[:45]: “Everyone who has heard and learned comes to Me.”

§ 93. “John 6:45: ‘Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.’ Therefore man can hear and learn by his own powers in such a way that he comes to Christ.”

We respond. In the same place Christ says clearly: “No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him. It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God’” [John 6:44–45]. Then later it follows: “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” Therefore in that statement of Christ there are contained such things that destroy the powers of free choice to the foundations. For if we are in need of being drawn, we surely do not come by our own powers. But because God teaches and draws not immediately and with violent raptures but mediately through the Word, in these words Christ expresses the order in which God generally teaches and draws people. He precedes every running and effort of ours and through the preaching of the Word teaches, illumines the mind, and bends the will not only outwardly but also inwardly.

Cyril (commentary on this passage): “The Father draws by admonition, teaching, and revelation; for where hearing, training, and teaching are present, there faith arises not by force but by persuasion.”

Augustine (on John, tractate 26): “See how the Father draws. He pleases by teaching, not by imposing a necessity. Let the Father teach you. Listen to the Son.” De grat. Christ. contra Pelag. (ch. 14): “When God teaches by the grace of the Spirit, He teaches in such a way that whatever a person learns, he sees not only by understanding it, but he even seeks it by willing it and perfects it by doing it. And by this divine manner of teaching, even the will and working itself are helped, and not just the natural possibility of willing and working. For if only this capability of ours were helped by this grace, the Lord would speak in this way: ‘Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father can come to Me.’” De praedest. sanct. (ch. 8): “This instruction in which the Father is heard and teaches that one should come to the Son is far, far removed from the sense of the flesh. We see that many people come to the Son because we see that many believe in Christ, but how and when they have heard and learned this from the Father we do not see. Clearly that grace is hidden, but who doubts that grace exists? etc. Therefore when the Father is heard within and teaches that one should come to the Son, He is removing the heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh [Ezek. 36:26].”

John 7[:17]: “Whoever wants to do the will of the Father will know about My teaching.”

§ 94. “John 7:17: ‘If anyone wishes to obey the will of the Father, he will know about My teaching, whether it is from God or if I am speaking from Myself.’ Therefore a person who does not know the teaching of Christ can obey the will of the Father.”

We respond. This pronouncement of Christ does not attribute a capability to the unregenerate by which they can subject and adapt themselves to the will of the heavenly Father in the inner work of conversion. Rather, it is required of those to whom the oracles of God are committed that they compare the teaching of Christ with the revealed Word without prejudices and emotions and not contradict it with stubborn impudence against the testimony of conscience.

Lyra (commentary [on this passage]): “Great love and hatred pervert the judgment of right reason. Thus He warns them to remove the hatred which they had felt against Him. And then they will be able to judge clearly that His teaching comes from the Father, who bears witness of it through miracles.”

Augustine (on John, tractate 29): “Doing the will of the Father means the actual believing. What is ‘he will know’? This is ‘he will understand.’ But what is ‘if anyone wants to do His will’? This is ‘to believe,’ in order that one may understand that the advice about the obedience of believing has been given for the possibility of understanding.”

John 15[:5]: “Without Me you can do nothing.”

§ 95. “John 15:5: ‘Without Me you can do nothing.’ Therefore, after being helped by God, we can do something.”

We respond. The word “nothing” is an exclusive particle which clearly leaves nothing to the powers of our choice outside of grace, and this is confirmed by the parable that Christ gives. Just as a branch cannot of itself make fruit but must receive life and sap from the vine, since if it is separated from the vine it quickly withers, so without Christ we can do nothing at all. Moreover, the word “without” never means an aiding or cooperating cause; rather, when it is attributed to God, it very often indicates the total cause. John 1:3: “All things were made through Him, and without Him is nothing made,” that is, not only did He create all things, but also He created all things without the help of anyone. This example can be beautifully applied to the article on restoration and recreation [ἀνἀκτισις].

Augustine (Contra duas epist. Pelag., bk. 2, ch. 8): “That the Lord might respond to the future Pelagius, He did not say, ‘Without Me it is with difficulty that you can do anything.’ Rather, He says, ‘Without Me you can do nothing.’ And that He might also respond to those future heretics in the same statement of the Gospel, He does not say, ‘Without Me you can complete nothing,’ but ‘do nothing.’ For if He had said ‘complete,’ they could have said that the help of God is necessary not to begin good, which comes from us, but to complete it.”

But if Christ’s statement is taken as a reference to the reborn themselves, in which sense Augustine (De Spir. et lit., ch. 29) takes it (and he does this not inappropriately, since Christ is speaking to the apostles who, He said, had been grafted like branches onto the heavenly vine), then we indeed concede that they are in need of the help of God in such a way that they nevertheless also cooperate with Him. But since that cooperation [συνέργεια] does not come from the original powers still left from the old birth but from new ones given by the Holy Spirit, it can in no way be applied to establish the efficacy of free choice in conversion itself. For if not even the reborn can do anything in spiritual and divine matters and produce some work of themselves without the grace of Christ, all the less should even a tiny bit be ascribed to the unregenerate, who are outside the grace of Christ.

Acts 5[:32]: “God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him.”

§ 96. “Acts 5:32: ‘God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him.’ Therefore we can obey God before we are given the Holy Spirit.”

We respond. “The mind of the flesh is hostility to God” (Rom. 8:7). Therefore how could we obey God before receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit? Rather, in his statement, Peter is discussing not the common gifts of the Holy Spirit which are necessary to all the devout for renewal and sanctification, but the miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit flowing down upon the disciples of the early church. This outpouring would not happen to those who were foreign to Christian faith and piety, but to those alone who had been obedient to the Word and who had been drawn through the Word to faith and obedience to the teaching of the Gospel. But if this is applied to conversion, it will have to be said that the Holy Spirit is given to the obedient, that is, to those who hear and meditate on the Word and do not resist the working of the Holy Spirit with hostility. For in Hebrew idiom affirmative words are very often used for denied contraries. In this way the statement would pertain to the rule that must be held carefully in this matter: violent raptures must not be sought nor enthusiastic movements expected; rather, the Holy Spirit is effectual through the word of the Gospel when we hear and think on it.

Acts 10[:4]: “Prayers and alms ascended to God.”

§ 97. “Acts 10:4: ‘The prayers and alms of Cornelius ascended to God’ before Peter taught him and before he received the Holy Spirit. Therefore people are equipped with the capability of preparing themselves for grace.”

We respond. Before Cornelius was taught by Peter, and before Cornelius received the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, he had some knowledge of the Messiah and His office through the Spirit of sanctification and was endowed with a faith which embraced the Messiah, though he did not yet know which individual person was the Mediator and Messiah. For he is said to have been “a devout man who feared God” (v. 2), and whose “prayers and alms ascended as a memorial before God” (v. 4). Therefore he was surely endowed with some faith, “for how will they call upon Him in whom they have not believed?” (Rom. 10:14). “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6).

Augustine (De praedest. sanct., bk. 1, ch. 7): “Whatever good Cornelius did before he believed and when he believed and after he believed, it must all be assigned entirely to God, lest anyone be extolled.” Ad Simplic. (bk. 1, q. 2): “In some people there is such a grace of faith as is insufficient to obtain the kingdom of heaven, as in the case of Cornelius. Thus in conversion occur incomplete beginnings similar to conceptions. Yet not only must one be conceived, but he also must be born. Yet none of this happens without the gracious mercy of God.”

Bede (commentary on this passage [in Acts]): “Cornelius was not reaching out to God by his virtues but was reaching out to virtues by his faith.”

The Glossa ordinaria, from Gregory: “Cornelius, whose alms are praised by angelic witness before his Baptism, comes not by works to faith but by faith to works. For if he did not believe in God before Baptism, how did he pray, or how would God hear him if he did not ask Him for an increase of good? Therefore he knew that God was the Creator of all things, but he did not know His incarnate Son; he had faith, and his alms and prayers pleased God.” (But in the same place in the Glossa this is added: “By his good work, Cornelius merited to know God,” and this is opposed to what it had said earlier.)

Acts 26[:19]: “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”

§ 98. “In Acts 26, as Paul gives the account of his conversion before King Agrippa, he says that he was ‘not disobedient to the heavenly vision’ (v. 19). Therefore he obeyed his heavenly calling by his own powers.”

We respond. From the verse immediately following, it is clear that the apostle is not speaking about the obedience of first conversion but about the obedience which followed conversion in accepting the duty of preaching the Gospel and the apostleship entrusted to him, for the words read this way: “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision but declared first to those who were at Damascus, then at Jerusalem and throughout all the country of Judea and also the Gentiles, that they should repent.” Nor shall a more illustrious example of free conversion be easily produced than this very conversion of Paul, who from a persecutor was made so great an apostle solely by God’s grace and effectual changing. Augustine says (Contra duas epist. Pelag. ad Bonif., bk. 1, ch. 19): “Tell me: what good did Paul will while he was still Saul? Was it not rather great evils? etc. With what merits of his good will did God convert him by a marvelous and sudden calling from these evils to good?”

Galatians 3[:14]: “The promise of the Spirit is received by faith.”

§ 99. “Gal. 3:14: ‘The promise of the Spirit is received by faith.’ Therefore faith precedes the reception of the Holy Spirit.”

We respond. Chemnitz in his Loci (part 1, art. De lib. arb., ch. 6, p. 479) treats this argument learnedly, and in his Judicium de controv. quibusd. qq. (p. 52) he asserts this, in brief: since in a great many declarations of Scripture faith is said to be the gift and work of the Holy Spirit, it cannot be said that faith is conceived and kindled out of natural powers before the grace of the Holy Spirit. Therefore the meaning of the apostle’s words is that we receive the Holy Spirit through the Word when we hear and meditate on the word of the Gospel which is “the ministry of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:6). For these things must not be divided: that we first sense the working of the Holy Spirit, and then later the hearing of and meditation on the Word follow. Nor should it be thought that we obtain the Holy Spirit by our meditation or desire. Rather, the Holy Spirit comes ahead of our will but not through enthusiastic or violent raptures, but rather when we begin from the Word. Therefore the phrase spoken here—“the promise of the Spirit is received by faith”—is explained in v. 2 in this way: that the Spirit is received ἐξ ἀκoῆς τῆς πίστεως, “through the hearing of the preached faith,” or through the preaching of the Gospel, perceived by listening. The Glossa interl. takes the “promise of the Spirit” to mean the blessedness which the Spirit promises, given as a pledge. Others take the passage to mean an increase of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, because many gifts of the Spirit are given to believers, and, having first been given, they are increased. But the first explanation is simpler and more in harmony with the text.

2 Timothy 2[:21]: “Whoever purifies himself will be a vessel for honor.”

§ 100. “2 Tim. 2:21: ‘If anyone purifies himself from these things, he will be a vessel for the honor of sanctification and useful to the Lord for every good work.’ Therefore through free choice man can prepare himself to be fit for obedience to God.”

We respond. Augustine (Hypognost., bk. 3) responds to Coelestius, who was arguing from this passage: “The person who already believes in God, one illumined and restored through grace, is one thing; but a person who does not believe is another.” For we cannot cleanse ourselves by our own powers, but it is God who “purifies hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9) and “purifies souls through the Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:22). Therefore what we cannot do of ourselves, we can accomplish by Him who gives and works effectually.

Revelation 3[:20]: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”

§ 101. “Rev. 3:20: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I shall come in to him and eat with him.’ Therefore by our powers of free choice we can open the door of our heart to Christ when He knocks.”

We respond. This is being expressed not as the capability of our powers but as the debt of our responsibility. For we are taught that the ministry of the Law knocks at our heart as a hammer; thus it is ours not to close our ears nor harden our heart, but to hear the voice of Him who knocks, to open our heart wide, and to receive Him quickly as He enters, something we cannot accomplish by our power but by the power of God, who “works in us to will” (Phil. 2:13) and “who opens our heart” (Acts 16:14) and prepares in it a dwelling place worthy of Himself. When God knocks at the door of our heart through the Word, and especially through the preaching of the Law, at the same time the grace of the Holy Spirit is present, who wants to work conversion in our heart. Therefore in that knocking He is not only present outside but also is acting within.

1 A “natural action” is an action in which an agent brings about an effect on a passive object and in which the agent is of greater power than the object. Bellarmine uses the term as a synonym for an irresistible action of God upon man. See Bellarmine, “Controversia de gratia et libero arbitrio,” bk. 1, ch. 12, in Roberti Cardinalis Bellarmini Opera Omnia 4:291. The antonym of a “natural action” is a “moral action,” in which the agent persuades, exhorts, and the like. See Deferrari, Lexicon of St. Thomas Aquinas, s.v. “actio” 1.e2, and below, § 58, where Bellarmine speaks of natural and moral causes.

2 I.e., “moral action,”; see the previous footnote.

3 Read proinde non per contrarios actus tollitur with Cotta instead of proinde per contrarios actus tollitur.

4 In scholastic thought, a disposition or habit [habitus] is an inclination of a rational being toward doing certain acts. A habit does not compel the doer, but makes him more ready and able to do certain acts. An “innate disposition” arises from a person’s nature. An “acquired disposition,” on the other hand, comes from repeated human actions, and hence it derives from free choice. For example, one can acquire the habit of playing the guitar by much practice (Signoriello, Lexicon peripateticum, 159, 161). Here Gerhard is saying that the corruption of original sin is an “innate disposition,” and thus cannot be removed by practicing good works.

5 What is here called “absolute necessity” is elsewhere called “necessity of the consequent.” It is a necessity by which something simply cannot be other than it is. What is here called “conditioned necessity” is elsewhere called “necessity of the consequence.” It is a necessity by which something is not necessary by its own nature but only on the supposition of something antecedent.

6 Cf. Vindication of All the Articles of Luther Condemned by the Recent Bull of Leo X (1520), WA 7:142–49.

7 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 14.

8 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 15.

9 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 16.

10 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 17.

11 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 18.

12 Read absolutam with Cotta instead of solutam.

13 On “primary actuality,” see above, p. 49 n. 4.

14 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 19.

15 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 20.

16 See above, p. 104 n. 2.

17 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 21.

18 Bellarmine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, bk. 5, ch. 22.

19 Cf. Lectures on Genesis (1535–45/1544–54), AE 1:269 (WA 42:199). 20

20 Gerhard’s Hebrew and Scripture references are in error here. Eccl. 7:29 has the word , “upright,” while Gen. 6:5 and 8:21 have the word , “intention.” Moreover, the word , “thicket,” does not appear in any of these texts.

21 I.e., the author of Ecclesiasticus, Jesus ben Sirach.

22 Contra malignum J. Eccii iudicium … defensio (1519), WA 2:647, cited in FC SD II 23.

23 Normally God’s “absolute power” means what God is able to do when we consider His power on its own, whereas His “ordinary” or “ordered power” is what God is able to do given what He has already chosen to do in creating and providentially directing this world. “By His absolute power God can do other things than what He foreknew and foreordained that He would do” (Signoriello, Lexicon peripateticum, 263). Here Gerhard uses these terms to distinguish what God could possibly due without means (absolute power) from what God can do through the means He has chosen (ordinary power).

24 This is Ps. 27:9 in English translations.

25 This is Ps. 70:2 in English translations.

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