How much contrition is required?
How much contrition is required?
§ 83. The sixth controversy is about “the quantity of contrition.” In explaining this, Bellarmine first tries to show that our doctrine of contrition reduces people to despair since we claim that true and earnest contrition is necessary. There is no true and earnest contrition except that which proceeds from the entire heart. But now, contrition from the entire heart, as love from the entire heart, is impossible according to our hypothesis. That is the summary [rubrica] of ch. 10.
We respond. In its own place [On the Law of God (Commonplace XV), § 195] we showed that the phrase “from the whole heart” has two meanings, for at times it is opposed to hypocrisy and pretense, in which sense and respect we confess that both contrition and love from the whole heart are possible because Scripture provides examples of those who turned to God and loved Him “from the whole heart.” Thus here the meaning of the phrase “with the whole heart” is “not hypocritically, not with a deceitful heart,” as is said in Ps. 12:2 about hypocrites: “They speak with a double heart.” But at other times “to love from the whole heart” indicates a love perfect and absolute in all degrees, a love by which we love from the whole heart, from the whole soul, from the whole mind, and from all our powers. We say that in this sense and respect both contrition and love from the whole heart—that is, as perfect as God requires—are impossible in this life. For all contrition, regardless of its quality or quantity, is by no means equal to the atrocity of sins and the magnitude of God’s wrath. Dr. Luther (Conc. de poenitentia, Latin ed., vol. 1, fol. 14):
If you want to repent not for the sake of the command but for the love of a new and better life, even if no one repents, confesses, or is contrite, and thus even if the whole world does otherwise—then you are truly penitent, etc. However, here you will find, if you do not wish to lie, that you are not such a person, but rather you want the prior life to allow you to be such because you sense that you are still totally inclined to that prior life, etc. Therefore what shall we do here? We must be such people, and we cannot be such people. Shall we all be damned then? May this never be! But let us respond: you should recognize that you are such a person and not deny this, but should go into a corner, and, according to Christ’s counsel, pray in secret to your Father in heaven and say without pretense: “Behold, good God, You command me to repent. But I am such a wretched person that I feel that I am unwilling to do this and cannot do it. Therefore I prostrate myself at Your feet. I beseech Your mercy and grace: make me the penitent whom You order to repent.”12
§ 84. But how much contrition do the Papists require? Bellarmine responds with six propositions:
(1) For such contrition it is necessary that it suffice for the remission of sins so that it may be equal to divine wrath. (2) Grief over sins must be of the highest sort, at least appreciably [appretiative], as the theologians speak of it. (3) It is unnecessary for contrition to be grief of the highest sort in intensity. (4) Nor is any certain level of intensity nor any length of time necessary for true contrition. (5) Nor is it required that there be as many acts of contrition as there were sins, provided that we grieve from the heart over all sins which come to mind after examination. (6) Nonetheless it is very useful that we lament over individual sins very bitterly and for a long time so that contrition can be called “the highest sort” not only appreciably but also intensively and extensively.
We respond. All these points are drawn not from the springs of Scripture but from the cisterns of the Scholastics. They support human merits and satisfactions. They establish the dogma of constant doubt and are injurious to the merits of Christ.
(1) Scripture teaches that contrition must not be hypocritical or superficial, but earnest and from the whole heart in order that a person may truly and seriously acknowledge that, due to the sins he has committed, he is guilty of divine wrath and temporal and eternal punishments and that he is a child of hell on this account. But Scripture nowhere mentions a grief that is of the highest sort “appreciably, intensively, or extensively.”
(2) “If a greater sin must be grieved over more greatly than a lesser sin; if the grief of repentance must equal or surpass the pleasure which we receive from sinning; if there is a danger that a person may deceive himself; if, while it is enough for him to stir himself up to keen and intense contrition, he does not even loathe his sins appreciably with his entire heart” (which are Bellarmine’s words in ch. 11); “if grief must arise out of contrition, a grief so intense that the bitterness of the grief can be equal to and compared with the magnitude of the sins” (as he says in De poenit., 1, ch. 4, col. 1168, from the Catechism. Roman.); “if no one can know for certain that he had true contrition” (as he says in De poenit., 2, ch. 14, in respons. ad object. 17)—then will not man’s conscience be tormented with unending doubts? Will his contrition be enough? Here pertains the Scholastics’s common teaching that those who are not so crushed in heart and do not weep over their sins so that contrition suffices to make satisfaction for the punishment of sin will feel the fire of purgatory if they die before the fulfillment of the contrition.
(3) If sins had to be expiated through our contrition, certainly the greatest contrition not only appreciably but also intensively and extensively would be required. God, whom sin offends, is infinite; His justice is infinite; His wrath against sin is infinite. Surely, then, the expiation of sin does not befit finite contrition but requires an infinite price, which Christ offered in our place. There is no reason for anyone to object, saying that the Passion and sufferings of Christ were also in some way finite because they ended at a certain time, since the infinity of Christ’s merit and the price He paid must be evaluated not on the basis of duration of time but on the infinity of His person. For it was not flesh alone but the very Son of God in the assumed flesh who endured the suffering, who, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the infinite God. (Bellarmine himself acknowledges this, De justif., bk. 2, ch. 5; there he correctly argues that the efficacy of the merit which Christ performed depends on the infinity of His person.) But our contrition does not have the nature of an infinite price or an equivalent price for sin since it proceeds from mere man, in whose flesh sin still dwells. Because of the oldness of the flesh which still remains, a person never grieves so earnestly over the sins he has committed without again taking pleasure in sins. For this reason the grief of contrition never corresponds to the will to sin. “Who understands sins?” (Ps. 19:12). “Who considers the power of Your anger and who, as is meet, fears Your indignation?” (Ps. 90:11).
(4) If our contrition can increase so much that it is not only of the highest sort appreciably and is sufficient for the remission of sins but can also be of the highest sort intensively and extensively, why, then, was it necessary for Christ to be bruised [attritum] and humbled because of our sins [Isa. 53:5], when our contrition can not only be sufficient but even superabundant?
(5) Finally, the members of a class are not diametrically opposed to one another. For grief to be of the highest sort appreciably (that is, according to the explanation of Bellarmine, for the will to value the loathing of sin greater than the attainment of any good or the avoidance of the other evil), it is altogether required that the will strive with all its might to satisfy exactly the judgment of reason and loathe sin with the greatest effort. This is the definition of a grief that is intensively of the highest sort. Consequently, a grief that is appreciably of the highest sort includes a grief that is intensively of the highest sort—if not formally, then according to power [virtualiter].