154. Presumption
154. PRESUMPTION
Presumption and despair are opposite deadly sins. We hear a lot about despair, and the need for hope; but what is presumption?
Many people seem to be in despair today, which manifests itself in depression; is presumption just as common?
There may be presumption . . . in the fact that a man tends to some good as though it were possible by the power and mercy of God whereas it is not possible, for instance if a man hope to obtain pardon without repenting (II-II,21,1). For just as it is false that God does not pardon the repentant, or that He does not turn sinners to repentance, so it is false that He grants forgiveness to those who persevere in their sins (II-II,21,2).
“Opposites attract.” This is true of evil as well as good. Hedonism and Puritanism, for instance, often go together. So do collectivism and individualism, once the sense of community is lost. So we find in modern Western civilization great presumption and great despair together. For instance the presumption that we can by our science and technology make ourselves unlimitedly intelligent and create a Heaven on earth—this presumption naturally begets a despairing disappointment and resentment against the few physical pains that remain in our lives, and the naïve optimism of this presumption begets a pessimism when it fails to deliver. Thus the “Enlightenment” begets the Existentialists’ despair.
It all comes from a denial of divine grace. St. Thomas thus detects a primary source of presumption in seeking genuinely good things, like human happiness on earth, as if we did not need divine grace to attain them; and in the hope that we can obtain God’s pardon and mercy without our confessing and repenting of sin. This was prophetic. That attitude was very rare in St. Thomas’ day; it is very common in ours. We hear of God’s free love and compassion and mercy on sinners all the time, but almost never about His necessary justice and wrath against sin.
St. Thomas thus mentions two apparently opposite falsehoods, both of which stem from the denial of the same truth, the truth of grace, redemption, salvation, and forgiveness: first, the despair that admits divine justice on sin but not the divine grace to convert sinners; and second, the presumption that admits divine grace but denies that there is any sin to forgive.
Thus we often hear people say, in response to “Forgive me”, “There’s nothing to forgive”—which is almost always false! If there is nothing to forgive, there is no sin. But there is. And the Devil is equally pleased at our embracing either of two alternatives to salvation, forgiveness, and redemption: either the Bad News without the Good News, justice without mercy, sin without salvation (an error more typical of the past), or the Good News without the Bad News, mercy without justice, salvation without sin (an error more typical of the present).
Thus one author described the presumption of typically modern Christianity as a religion in which “a God without wrath saves a man without sin by mercy without judgment for a Heaven without a Hell through a Christ without a cross.” God does not and cannot forgive a man who does not accept forgiveness because he does not admit his sin but justifies it. If we justify ourselves, how can God justify us? If we believe “there is nothing to forgive”, how can we receive forgiveness? Christ clearly said that we needed repentance as well as faith to be saved. Faith and hope without repentance (which is presumptuous) can no more save us than repentance without faith and hope (which is despairing, like Judas’ repentance). The God-glue is a two-part epoxy.