Can contrition be had without the special help of God?
Can contrition be had without the special help of God?
§ 79. Bellarmine deals with the second question (ch. 3), “whether contrition can be had without the special help of God,” and denies this possibility and proves the necessity of grace against the Pelagians.
We respond. The Holy Spirit is the author of true conversion not in such a way that the human will cooperates with Him of itself and of its own natural powers but in such a way that the entire work of conversion must be attributed to Him. He gives a person new powers with which he later cooperates in good works, but He does not stir up sleeping powers and restore their use or “restore only the secondary actuality,” as the more recent Papists argue. For Bellarmine writes (De liber. arbit., bk. 6, ch. 11): “We cooperate with God not only after conversion but also in our very regeneration and in the beginning of faith, and in such a way that, though free choice has been weakened, it still has not been extinguished in the act of believing.” As to the fact that Bellarmine denies that some Scholastics claim that the attempts and will of man precede grace, this is denying that the sun shines at noon; for from this arise the disputations about preparations for grace, congruous merit, the love of God above all things out of our purely natural state, and preparation for justification.