Chapter VIII: The Works of the Unregenerate, § 103.
CHAPTER VIII: ON THE WORKS OF THE UNREGENERATE
The verdict of the Holy Spirit concerning the works of unbelievers.
§ 103. Furthermore, what we have said above—that unregenerate people can do nothing except sin—must be taken with this explanation: either the action is depraved of itself, or it becomes depraved due to accident. We say this on account of the external discipline and civil righteousness which even the unregenerate can perform and because they can control their external movement. These external works, such as covering the naked, helping those in danger, etc., though they are not sins in themselves on the basis of their type of act, become sins and do not please God. This occurs, namely, because the person has not yet been reconciled to God through faith in Christ. Heb. 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Rom. 14:23: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Titus 1:15: “To the impure and unfaithful nothing is clean.” Matt. 7:18: “A bad tree cannot bear good fruits.”
God does not judge according to appearance but according to truth. He considers the heart and considers its duties not on the basis of their acts but on the basis of His commandment, the true cause, form, and ends. For them to be good they must be done by a good person for a good end. Dionysius said: “For a good is considered good on the basis of the whole cause.” Although the works of heathen may have a fine appearance, yet because “they have not been done by God” (John 3:21), they are sins in the judgment of God. Nothing within us pleases God except what He Himself works in us. Those who are not yet grafted into Christ, the true vine, cannot produce salutary fruits (John 15:4). Those not yet reborn are “hostile in mind in evil works” (Col. 1:[21]), “wild olive trees” (Rom. 11:[24]), “are the children of wrath” (John 3:36 [cf. Eph. 2:3]). But what pleasing thing can be offered by enemies? What fruit can be hoped for from the wild olive tree? What can be expected from the sprig without the vine? That is why it is said of the sacrifices of the wicked that they are “abominations to the Lord” (Prov. 15:8; Isa. 66:3). Isa. 1:12: “Who has required this from your hands?” “Their prayers are not heard” (Isa. 1:15); their “fasts are rejected” (Isa. 58:[3]). This is because these things do not come from faith, from a heart purified by faith, from a good conscience; they are done in the oldness of the letter and not in the newness of the Spirit, they are applied not to the glory of God but to empty boasting.
The statements of the ancients.
§ 104. Hence the ancients, especially Augustine, so often repeat that without faith no truly good works can be done, that the entire life of unbelievers is sin, etc.
Augustine (Ad Bonif., bk. 3, ch. 5): “Without faith, works which appear to be good are turned into sins, for whatever is not done of faith is sin.” Contra Julian. (bk. 4, ch. 3): “There can be no true virtue except in him who is just, but no one can be just without faith.” Tractate on Psalm 31: “Although the works which are said to have been done before faith may appear praiseworthy to people, they are worthless. Thus to me they appear to be great powers and very swift running outside the path. No one should count his works before faith; where faith did not exist, there was no good work. For intent makes a work good, and faith directs the intent. Do not pay much attention to what a person does but to what he is looking toward when he does it.” [Augustine] writes statements similar to these in De civ. Dei (bk. 5, ch. 12; bk. 19, ch. 25); Letter 99; De nupt. et conc. (bk. 1, ch. 3); etc.
Basil (De bapt., bk. 2, ch. 7): “When a sinner sacrifices, it is the same as if he were killing a dog.”
Chrysostom (vol. 3, Sermon de fide et leg. nat., col. 901) compares “the works of the unregenerate to the beautiful and expensive clothes of the dead who have no sense of them nor desire their warmth, strength, or benefit.”
Jerome (on Zechariah 8 and Galatians 3): “Without Christ every virtue lies in sin.”
Ambrose or Prosper (De vocat. gent., bk. 1, ch. 3): “Without the worship of the true God, the things which appear to be virtues are sins. No one can please God without God, but who is pleased by him who does not please God except himself and the devil?”
Anselm (on Romans 14): “The entire life of the unbeliever is sin, and nothing is good without the greatest good.”
In fact, even Lombard writes (Sent., 2, dist. 41, letter A): “It is not irrationally claimed by some that all actions and wills of a person without faith are evil, which become good with the possession of faith.”
Antithesis.
§ 105. But the open truth that all the works of the faithless are sins is said to be “a harsh and cruel paradox” by the Censura Coloniensis, and it is not approved by Bellarmine (De grat. et lib. arbitr., bk. 5, ch. 9). He argues thus: “Good works can be done by unbelievers with the special help of God or by the powers of nature alone. (I) Scripture testifies that God rewards some works of the heathen. Therefore they are surely not evil; otherwise punishment and not reward would be owed.”
We respond. External obedience is compensated with external reward. The actions of unbelievers are good in a civil sense; thus, in order that human society may be preserved, they are rewarded by God with temporal blessing, but they do not become truly and spiritually good before God because of this.
(II) [Bellarmine argues:] “Some Scriptures indicate that unbelievers do some good works, such as ‘greeting the brethren’ (Matt. 5[:47] and ‘doing the things which are of the Law’ (Rom. 2[:26]).”
We respond. Things are said to be good either according to their appearance alone or because the substance of the work is good in itself, though they are evil in the subject, object, end purpose, and other circumstances. The judgment is the same regarding the statements of the fathers.
Bellarmine also adds two explanations: (1) “No explanation can be given as to why the works of unbelievers would always be sins, because they are sometimes done for the glory of God and are not vitiated by their own cause.”
We respond. How do those to whom the true God is unknown direct their works to the glory of the true God? There is no other true God than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How will the works of those whose heart is unclean not be unclean and iniquitous? How can the works of those who are themselves not pleasing to God be pleasing to God? The person who is not yet reconciled to God through faith in Christ cannot do truly good works which please God.
(2) [Bellarmine:] “If no good work were able to be done by unbelievers, it would be better for them to do evil works than good ones.”
We respond. Not at all, for though actions that are morally and civilly good are not truly good but are sins in the judgment of God, nevertheless God demands them from the unregenerate in order to preserve society by punishing wrongdoers and by granting rewards to the obedient.
The counterarguments of Bellarmine.
§ 106. In ch. 10 Bellarmine attempts to overturn the foundations of our position. He says: (I) “The statements which prove that the sacrifices of the wicked do not please God destroy the idea that there is a great difference between sacrifices and moral works, because the former require a hatred of sins and a pure conscience, but these are not required in the latter.”
We respond. On the contrary, a truly good and God-pleasing work also requires a hatred of sins and a purity of conscience, for how will that which flows from a polluted spring be pure? 1 Tim. 1:5: “The end purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and an unfeigned faith.” Therefore when a heart has not yet been purified nor the conscience cleansed through faith in Christ, a good work does not proceed from the sort of love which the Law requires.
(II) When the Holy Spirit says that “every imagination of the heart is evil” [Gen. 6:5], Bellarmine explains that as a reference to “the greater part of mankind of that age.”
We respond. In its own place [On Original Sin (Commonplace XII), § 61; On Actual Sins (Commonplace XIII), § 52] we have shown that a fine description of original sin is being set forth in this passage, for the Holy Spirit clearly uses not only the universal words “every imagination” and “at every time” but also the exclusive word “only,” and these we shall not suffer to be covered with clouds of sophistry.
(III) Bellarmine makes such sport of “bad trees cannot produce good fruits” [Matt. 7:18] that he says, “A bad tree indeed produces bad fruits ordinarily and most frequently, but it also sometimes produces some good fruit.”
We respond. The negative statement of Christ is quite plain and clear: “A bad tree cannot produce good fruits.” But now, the unregenerate are bad trees; for though they have some good things of nature, yet they have been depraved and corrupted by sin. Thus nothing can come from them except what is depraved, corrupt, and unclean.
(IV) [Bellarmine argues:] “Before regeneration man is flesh, yet he is not forced to be obedient to the flesh in every work.”
We respond. All the works of one who is entirely flesh proceed from the old flesh, for how would he who is totally carnal and still not in any part renewed by the Holy Spirit do some things which are not carnal?
(V) [Bellarmine argues:] “Indeed, works of piety and salvation cannot be accomplished without the help of grace, yet moral works can.”
We respond. That is entirely true; yet moral works themselves are sins in the judgment of God and do not obtain any merit for gaining the grace of conversion.
(VI) [Bellarmine argues:] “In the apostolic statement ‘whatever is not of faith is sin’ [Rom. 14:23], the word ‘faith’ does not mean saving faith but the testimony of conscience.”
We respond. Augustine clearly and completely takes it as a reference to saving faith, which explanation does no violence to the text at all, since there is no certainty of conscience without faith, because it alone follows the lead of the Word whose light shines ahead and fully confirms our conscience so that we know what pleases God and what displeases Him. Whatever does not proceed from this faith cannot please God. Thus the works which are not done out of faith are also sins, because the works of man are never so pure and perfect that they reach the supreme perfection prescribed in the Law. Thus the works of the reborn please God because they proceed from faith, because through faith a person is reconciled to God, just as a parent considers the obedience of his child pleasing and acceptable for the very reason that it proceeds from his child. From this passage, the Glossa ordinaria itself concludes that the entire life of unbelievers is sin.
(VII) [Bellarmine argues:] “ ‘For the faithless nothing is clean’ [Titus 1:15] must be taken as a reference to foods and not to works.”
We respond. The apostle adds clearly “because their mind and conscience are defiled.” Thus just as the foods themselves (which nevertheless are considered among the clean according to the Law of God) are unclean for the faithless, so also their mind and conscience are defiled for this very reason: they are not yet renewed through the Holy Spirit.
(VIII) [Bellarmine argues:] “ ‘Without faith it is impossible to please God’ [Heb. 11:6] such that someone might be rendered a friend to God; yet as human nature itself pleases God, so also do works done out of the goodness of that nature.”
We respond. The nature itself is good with regard to its substance yet is also contaminated, infected, and corrupted through sin, in which respect it not only does not please God but even is condemned. In the same way also, moral works done out of the goodness of the nature are good with regard to the act, yet due to inherent sin they are not truly good nor God-pleasing.
The remaining statements of Scripture which Bellarmine attributes to us belong to another place, nor do they directly prove what they are introduced to prove.
§ 107. In ch. 11 [Bellarmine] responds to the statements of the fathers which, he says, must be explained “as a reference to good works which pertain to salvation of the sort that cannot be accomplished by unbelievers; or as a reference to a good work which is assigned to a bad end, or at least which is sin in the broad sense, because it does not have every perfection which it could have; or as a reference to works with regard to the temptations which either accompany them or would accompany them if the perfection and the unique providence of God were not keeping watch.”
We respond. The ancients clearly say that the works of unbelievers not only do not profit them for salvation but also are not truly good, namely, because they lack due perfection with respect to all causes. Neither do they say that unregenerate people usually sin, but rather that they can do nothing except sin, whether those actions are sins in themselves or are sins because of something else. How far this is from the congruous merit which is asserted with such effort by the Scholastics, from dispositions to grace, from the possession of eternal salvation which Andrada and others promise to unbelievers!
In ch. 12 [Bellarmine] responds to “arguments drawn from reason,” to which we do not attribute much, since we are content with the statements of Scripture which testify clearly that the whole person has been corrupted through sin and that reason is not immune from that corruption. Therefore the things that Bellarmine disputes regarding “the seeds of virtues,” “the good of nature,” “the rewards of virtues,” etc., merely prove that somehow the unregenerate can control their external movement and attain civil honor. But they do not yet prove that before God this is not sin, that is, contaminated by sin.