Chapter XI: An Explanation of Some Statements of Scripture and of Some Questions Concerning Free Choice, § 128.
CHAPTER XI: AN EXPLANATION OF SOME STATEMENTS
OF SCRIPTURE AND OF SOME QUESTIONS CONCERNING FREE CHOICE
§ 128. On the basis of this foundation, many things can be more rightly understood and judged. In Luke 11:13 Christ says, “The heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.” Yet in 1 Cor. 12:3 the apostle expressly says: “No one can say ‘Lord Jesus’” (namely, out of true faith and not merely by the mouth’s profession) “except by the Holy Spirit.” “He alone is the Spirit of prayer” (Zech. 12:10) who “teaches us to pray” (Rom. 8:26). Therefore how should the statement of Christ be understood?
We respond. Christ is speaking not about the first spark of faith and the first salutary movements such that we can precede the first beginning of faith with prayers that proceed from the natural powers of our choice without the Holy Spirit. Rather, He is speaking about the increase of the gifts of the Holy Spirit which have already been received, which must be obtained by seeking, asking, and knocking. He wants to teach that we should not wait for perceptible, violent movements in order to determine the presence of the Holy Spirit, but that when the desire is present, even if it barely shows itself with secret groans, we should still be sure that the Holy Spirit is present and that therefore we should pray for His richer grace.
§ 129. Thus in Gal. 3:14 “the promise of the Spirit” is said to be “received through faith,” not because faith first emerges from the powers of our choice, and through this faith we are afterward made partakers of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Rather, the apostle intends to say that the efficacy of the Holy Spirit reveals itself through the Word. We receive the Holy Spirit by faith when we hear and meditate on the word of the Gospel. We receive the promise of the Spirit by faith, and yet faith comes by hearing through the working of the Holy Spirit [cf. Rom. 10:17]. The Holy Spirit first approaches someone externally as he listens to the Word, and finally through the faith He has kindled He begins to dwell in his heart. As the Bridegroom of our soul, Christ tries to reconcile our soul to Himself through the Holy Spirit and overcome it so that the mystical betrothal may occur. About this see Hosea 2:19 and elsewhere.
Is man purely passive in conversion?
§ 130. From this, these questions can be decided: Is man purely passive in conversion? Is he like a stone and a log? Is he converted while resisting? etc. Answers in regard to this subject must be established from the Word of God and the truth. Man does not produce an active [ἐνεργητική] capability for these spiritual movements in conversion from the store of his own natural powers. Nevertheless renewal is not received in the same way as a stone or wax receives an impression. Rather, “God works in us to will” (Phil. 2:13). For this reason Augustine (De corrept. et gr., ch. 14) writes: “God draws people by their own wills, but it is He who worked those wills”; and De grat. et lib. arb. (ch. 16): “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, ‘It is God who works in us to will’ [Phil. 2:13].”
§ 131. Indeed, “the heart of man” before conversion “is of stone” (Ezek. 36:26). Yet meanwhile it should not be thought that man’s conversion is coerced violently, that the will is beat upon and pushed about by brute force the way stones tumble down, or is made without any movement [of the will] like the oracles that used to be poured out by possessed people. Rather, with these and similar phrases it is taught that in man not even tiny bits of his natural powers survive with which he might be able to work his own conversion.
Is he like a stone and a log?
§ 132. It is said that the will of man is a purely passive subject, not active, and is correctly compared to a stone. In respect to this, however, because man has been endowed with a will, or with a power to will—to which, as to a subject, the external grace of conversion can come—it is apparent that he differs from a stone in this respect: because it is certainly incapable of conversion.
§ 133. Some call it a passive [passiva] capacity. Some call it a passive [παθητική] aptitude (by which the will cannot convert itself but only be converted by something else). Some call it an essential power of the soul. And some call it free choice. Thus Dr. Luther (vol. 1, f. 236) writes: “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.”1 Augustine writes beautifully (Letter 107 ad Vitell.): “If we truly wish to defend free choice, we should not attack the source from which it becomes free. For he who attacks the grace by which the choice is freed to turn away from evil and to do good still desires his own choice to be held captive.”
§ 134. In fact, in a certain respect the will of man before conversion is worse than a stone or a log, because a stone does not fight against the artist, but “the mind of the flesh is hostility toward God” (Rom. 8:7), and “the law in my members is at war with the law of my mind” (Rom. 7:23), and thus “every thought of the intellect must be taken captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5), and “no one comes” to Christ “except the heavenly Father draw him” (John 6:44).
[Is one who resists converted?]
§ 135. Yet take note that a violent drawing must not in turn be imagined, as if even those are drawn to Christ who persevere in wickedly and stubbornly resisting God as He calls, for by rejecting the Word such people “judge themselves unworthy of eternal life” (Acts 13:46). Rather, by means of the preaching and hearing of the Word, God bends the will of man through the power of the Holy Spirit and makes an unwilling person willing, agreeing, and obedient, for the Word is that catching net through which God draws (Matt. 13:47). Be careful not to understand this in the sense that He is merely showing what He wants to be done in the Word. Rather, an inner efficacy is also required by which the mind is illuminated and the will is turned. Bernard (on Song of Songs, sermon 2): “Draw” (O God) “the will, which is in some way unwilling, to make it willing; draw the sluggish will to make it run.”
§ 136. Pelagius had said that grace assists the good intent of everyone, yet that a zeal for virtue is not sent upon one who resists. Augustine responds (Contra duas epistolas, bk. 4, ch. 6): “It could be understood [to be said] well if it were not said by those whose meaning is known, for the first coming of the divine call is procured for the resisting person by the very grace of God, and then the Spirit of virtue is kindled in him, and he is no longer reluctant.”
§ 137. Ambrose had said (De voc. gent., bk. 2, ch. 9): “The fact that grace is rejected by many is of their wickedness. That many receive it is of divine grace and human will.” But he explains himself correctly in the same place: “For grace itself does this with every type of aiding and assisting, so that in him whom He calls He prepares the will to be a very good receiver for it and to be a servant of His gifts.”
§ 138. What we have said about the manner of conversion is set forth by Christ in this way (John 6:44–45): “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. It is written in the prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’” Therefore it is required that we be drawn by the Father, that we be taught by God. But He adds: “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me” [v. 45]. For God teaches, and we learn not without means but through the Word. Therefore the statement of Christ expresses the order in which God usually draws people. With His own grace He Himself comes ahead of every movement and attempt of ours, reveals and publishes His Word, and manifests it through His Son. Therefore he who hears the Son hears the Father, and he who hears the ambassadors of the Son hears the Son Himself [cf. Luke 10:16]. Therefore whoever wants to be drawn by the Father should listen to Christ’s Word, through which He wants to be effectual, for “the Gospel is the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16). And he should not merely listen, but listen with the intent to learn. That is why Christ connects hearing and learning. Learning and advancing in the classroom of God are not within our powers. Nevertheless because a hunger for hearing the Word is ascribed even to the unregenerate (Amos 8:11) and because Herod listened to John “gladly” (Mark [6]:20), from this it is apparent that an eagerness to hear and learn still partly belongs to man even before his conversion.
Cyril (commentary on this passage [from John]): “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, tr. 26): “See how the Father draws! He attracts by teaching, not by imposing a necessity. Learn to be drawn to the Son by the Father; that the Father may teach you, listen to the Son.”
§ 139. Even in unregenerate man there remain these natural, theoretical ideas [notitiae]: that God exists; and these practical [ideas]: that He is just and the avenger of crimes. There survives a “natural knowledge of the moral law” [συντήρησις],2 that the thoughts of people, even of totally heathen people, accuse them (Rom. 2:15). Also the thought of a judgment after this life has not completely died. Both an internal testimony exists in man and the testimony of the Holy Spirit exists in the Word. When these are connected, they can stir up some interest in hearing and learning even in those who are not yet converted, so that a person afterward is convicted through the working of the Holy Spirit by inner and outer testimony and is converted to God.
1 Contra malignum J. Eccii iudicium … defensio (1519), WA 2:647, cited in FC SD II 23.
2 For the meaning of the συντήρησις in scholastic thought, see Deferrari, Lexicon of St. Thomas Aquinas, s.v. “synderesis.”